Lit Hub Daily: August 7, 2023

• “We should not write what we know but what we don’t know about what we know.” William Dameron on the tricky art of turning truth into fiction. | Lit Hub

• Janet Wallach chronicles the making of WWI-era socialite and spy Marguerite Harrison. | Lit Hub Biography

• Voices from the Radium Age: How scientific and technological breakthroughs created a new kind of fiction. | Lit Hub Sci-Fi

• Prudence Peiffer on balancing motherhood and authorhood: “I am trying to be more honest, and allow that this is different from complaining.” | Lit Hub

• “As Marcus sees it, disappointment is fundamentally generative.” Lynn Feeley on Sara Marcus’s Political Disappointment: A Cultural History from Reconstruction to the AIDS Crisis. | The Nation 

• Suzanne Nossel lays out the profound implications of Hollywood’s fight against AI. | The New Republic 

• “It’s about the legacy of trauma, dislocation and loss, all classic nostalgia triggers.” Helen Macdonald and her co-writer Sin Blaché on writing a book with Barbenheimer vibes. | The Guardian

• Sophia McClennan discusses the role of political satire in decoding the chaos of the Trump White House. | JSTOR Daily

• A brief history of the letter X. | Smithsonian Magazine

Also on Lit Hub: How Richard Wright inspired Omer Aziz • How casting Helen of Troy becomes an exercise in female power • Read from Ben Purkert’s debut novel, The Men Can’t Be Saved