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.
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
[contact-form subject='[SMILEY%26#039;S DICE’][contact-field label="Name" type="name" required="1"/][contact-field label="Email" type="email" required="1"/][contact-field label="Website" type="url"/][contact-field label="Comment" type="textarea" required="1"/][/contact-form] I’m a creative nonfiction short story writer, and a columnist on arts and lifestyle. I have never said one word about politics; I am not a debater, academic, or political science major.
Do to an act of nature, lightening, I lost Cable for a month. This was when Syria broke. No one talked about it here, and I felt the communities disillusionment. When my service was repaired, I turned on the news. I felt more insulted than the time a young boy told me my legs were hairy. Who did you think you are kidding? You want us to watch both sides fisting each other like a street gang! Please someone tell them, the Press, chill out a bit and stop turning the news into a talk show. You talk to us as we were mutes. The Government has evolved as false as who we see in the mirror. If you are plain you see beautiful, if you are beautiful you see plain. I see you government, and I am ashamed.
I haven’t read the papers since June. This Thursday I went to the bank to make a deposit to cover my negative, and I looked at the newspapers on the customer coffee table., My eyes shut after two headlines. How much more can we take? I really have lost track of priorities.
Should I get a job because my writing remains unrecognized. I need a retirement guidance counselor. I don’t like the title of financial advisor; they sound too rigid. Should I respond to the dreadful vacillation of American Policy. How much more debating can they do? It’s like when I worked in corporate real estate. The meetings I attended and had to present were progress reports on whether I was an effective employee. I don’t know how I lasted as long as I did; my act was good, and I impressed some of the boys, but communication was too formal to bring out honesty. Maybe that’s what has evaporated in our
government, or am I seeing it differently because I’ve aged into it slowly. I think it started when the cool shit act came about. Some artists have it, Musicians, yea they got it, gangsta’s got it, but they always had it. Those of us who feigned cool acts, became feigned. Rambling now. Got to sweep fall leaves and
start editing 350 columns.
I’m listing to Nessun Dorma, and oil treating my hair. I was thinking how much I detest all this multitasking. I can now handle five projects at once; write, sweep mop the floor, water plants, contemplate resolutions to my finances, all the while feeling my nerves tighten, and even though I stretch four times a day; this crushing operatic play in life is overstrung. I watch those Sandals vacation commercials and practically cry because how many of us haven’t had a vacation in years, or a chance to
play a round or golf or read More Magazine all the way through?
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
What is this nonsense? Am I really listening to a national complaint against,
Christmas? Who needs a job? Whoever you are that started this, dig yourself a hole in the ground and meditate for a month.
I’m half Jewish, half Catholic-all I know about my mother’s religion is the holidays. They remind me of her, and how the two weeks transformed our home, because she happy, really looking forward to seeing her mom, and sisters, and nieces and nephews….
Whoever you are, watch Hallmark television. We are saps for comfort.
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
GUEST ALERT: Daughter Of Reputed Mobster, Making The Radio Rounds
THE MOUTH, NOVEMBER 8TH, 2011 — Luellen Smiley is the daughter of reputed mobster, Allen Smiley. Smiley’s dad was a close friend and confidant of famous Las Vegas mobster Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel and he was sitting on the couch just feet away from Siegel the night he was murdered. While Luellen Smiley hadn’t been born at the time of the shooting, she’s conducted research on her father’s life and the events leading up to the shooting and wants to dispel the common belief that her father might have been involved in the shooting. Luellen Smiley has contributed artifacts to the Las Vegas Mob Experience and she joins us to discuss her family history. She’s out promoting the fact that the gangsters of old were not trigger-happy murderers and that J. Edgar Hoover was someone who was out to get them in a big way. Not letting them go straight, etc. She also believes that J. Edgar Hoover was behind the killing of Bugsy Siegel. (Bugsy’s killing was never solved). This week, she joined KNPR for chat. LISTEN TO AUDIO HERE To set up, contact Scott Segelbaum HERE
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
