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.
POP-UP THOUGHT ON A RAINY THURSDAY.
Direction is a choice; move back home, move near your children, move for a job, but in my case, I move because my act in Saratoga will come to a close. I’m like a blank space between two paragraphs; it sounds like freedom, no commitments other than being the best I can be. Starting over in a new location is about redesigning within.
I’m still a nomad, searching for adventuresinlivingness. As I lay my head down on my pillow, the interim is asking me to be peaceful, faithful, and confident. It’s about time!
Reminds me of when I went off to college, a liberating extension of those early days when belonging to things didn’t matter, life mattered. If you are single and without children, this is the knife that we must slice into a piece we accept, or no peace will lull us to sleep.
ON THE ROAD FROM SOMEWHERE TO SOMEWHERE, I CAN’T REMEMBER. MAYBE SANTA FE TO SAN DIEGO.
2 responses to “”
Wherever life takes you, just keep writing! Yours is an interesting story and inspiring and fun to follow, all best wishes for your journey – Kris B.
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Thank you, Kriss. Every writer needs a loyal reader. Every dog needs
a singing collar.LOL
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