As of this April, Elif Batuman still self-identified as "a C-list writer" on her blog. We must beg to differ. We recall, for instance, her auspicious 2006 New Yorker debut, a profile of local Thai boxing champion Bunkerd Faphimai, for which she took lessons at his Bryant Street gym. We've watched the A-list evidence mount steadily since then, with the smart young Stanford prof and literary spelunker racking up merry think pieces in national magazines and journals, inwcluding our own beloved Believer. Her recent first book, The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them, gathers some of her other gems and sets a disarming example of one fine way to have a San Francisco writer's life.