LUELLEN SMILEY ADVENTURERS IN LIVINGNESS

Where Gaps of Expression are Liberated

ABOUT

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.

A CAT CAREGIVER


Today I am working on my next book, based on a true story, about 423 pages so far. I want it to end, but art imitates life so it goes on.

One excerpt: JUNE 10, 2017. Santa Fe, NM


The sun seemed to say, ” Ok, it’s summer, let’s go outdoors.’ I listened. With my badass worker’s gloves, I lifted that rod iron antique chaise with a broken wheel to my patio. Then I washed the cushion with bleach and soap and let it dry. A few hours later I looked outside, CatRockette is curled up on the chaise, we are listening to Opera. Tiny drops of beauty I am beginning to see again.
Carrying hatred is like wearing a coat of repellent against the world. Its aroma may be masked by Chanel but I am certain the whiff of my malcontent is apparent. All the advice and counseling from lawyers, legal-aid, and foreclosure specialists feels bloated. I’m switching from outside counsel to instinct. I’m learning to be more like Rockette. God must have sent him, he is indifferent to the diesel engines, steel ramps crashing on the pavement, racing cars, construction, and my irascible moods. His cat habitat is to sleep during the day, eat tiny meals every few hours, cry every few hours and wait for me to cry back. Around midnight he goes out hunting, returns at three in the morning, and I have to feed him. Then I’m awake so I’m drinking coffee and watching movies. It’s taken three weeks for me to gracefully and tenderly allow him to cry and wake me up. Without him is unbearable. We all need to take care of someone.

LouLou

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