One story that got lost amidst the BEA shuffle was Sheelah Kolhatkar's Observer profile of Lila Zanganeh, a 29 year old Iranian-born Parisian writer who, as Kolhatkar puts it, turns up everywhere - the annual P.E.N. gala, The Paris Review's booze-soaked bacchanals, cocktail gatherings at the New York Public Library and myriad readings and talks, as well as any place where Salman Rushdie and his wife Padma are likely to drop by.

So why does she seem to know everyone in the literary world so easily and quickly? "The New York literary world is incredibly monocultural," said her friend and occasional editor Adam Shatz, The Nation's literary editor. "But I think that when someone like Lila walks into the room, people wake up. They're confounded and fascinated, because they don't know people like her. And she has a sense of style that is woefully lacking in these parts."

Case in point: how many people could call up the New York Times' culture editor and pitch a story so effortlessly? "That, for me, could only happen in America," Zanganeh said, "this feeling of childlike energy. There's this cliche that Americans are always optimistic, but it's true. Americans are always so much more optimistic than the French. In France, nothing's quite possible."