Luellen Smiley is a creative nonfiction writer, author, columnist, and historian whose writing is deeply rooted in a controversial personal history. She is the daughter of Allen Smiley, a close friend, associate, and business partner of notorious Las Vegas gangster Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel. Her father was sitting only feet from Siegel when Siegel was murdered in Beverly Hills on June 20, 1947.
That extraordinary childhood history became the foundation for Smiley’s first book, Cradle of Crime: A Daughter’s Tribute, published in 2017. The memoir explores what it was like to grow up as the daughter of a man connected to organized crime while trying to reconcile her love for her father with the secrecy, fear, and criminal world surrounding him.
Smiley’s work has appeared in publications including the New York Post, MORE Magazine, Southern California newspapers, and Authorlink. She wrote the newspaper column Smiley’s Dice—Adventures in Livingness, which earned a Blue-Ribbon Award from the California Newspapers Association for her Growing Up With Gangsters columns.
Her interest in her father’s history also led her to become a researcher and commentator on organized crime history. She has participated in television, radio, and documentary interviews.
Smiley’s next book, Gaslighting Greta, will be published this year. A personal story that reads like fiction. Her own website describes the project as exploring a woman whose life is destabilized by gaslighting and psychological manipulation.
Her writing career reflects a recurring theme: using personal experience and research to uncover the truth behind complicated relationships and extraordinary lives. From the secretive world surrounding her father and Bugsy Siegel to the deeply personal territory of Gaslighting Greta, Smiley’s work transforms difficult experiences into stories of survival, discovery, and ultimately reclaiming one’s voice.
Luellen Smiley is an author whose life has given her an unusual perspective on secrecy, manipulation, family loyalty, betrayal, and survival—and she uses that perspective as the raw material for her nonfiction storytelling.
MAYHEM IN THE MIDDLE EAST
I cannot overlook the rise of a new terrorist organization, one most of us have not heard about. The news broke on the day I hosted a party. The preparation was surreal; as I switched from party chores to watch the television coverage. Breathless journalists, some who only that day learned of ISIS, masked their emotions. The truth was too barbaric even for a seasoned war correspondent. A week has passed; and the ISIS is not mentioned in conversations that I over- hear. When I mention the threat I see my listener flick it off, like a flee. I sense their aversion to terrorism in the Middle East; while I am drawn to it.
This image posted on a Twitter account on June 12 shows militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria removing part of the soil barrier on the Iraq-Syria border and moving through it. (AP Photo/albaraka_news)
Most Americans live in a vacuum of their own making, which consists of a false sense of security. They can’t HEAR of the violence in the Middle East for fear of disrupting their tranquility of life…..and while the World burns, they watch from the sidelines and ignore it all, except for a slap…..POLITICIANS ALIKE.
overlook the rise of a new terrorist organization, one most of us have not heard about. The news broke on the day I hosted a party. The preparation was surreal; as I switched from party chores to watch the television coverage. Breathless journalists, some who only that day learned of ISIS, masked their emotions. The truth was too barbaric even for a seasoned war correspondent. A week has passed; and the ISIS is not mentioned in conversations that I over- hear. When I mention the threat I see my listener flick it off, like a flee. I sense their aversion to terrorism in the Middle East; while I am drawn to it.
One response to “MAYHEM IN THE MIDDLE EAST”
Most Americans live in a vacuum of their own making, which consists of a false sense of security. They can’t HEAR of the violence in the Middle East for fear of disrupting their tranquility of life…..and while the World burns, they watch from the sidelines and ignore it all, except for a slap…..POLITICIANS ALIKE.
GOOD POST, AT LEAST SOMEONE IS PAYING ATTENTION
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