Role: Editor at Large
Magic hooked me at age 4, but by age 16, I had decided I wasn’t going to perform. While I was falling in love with theater, I was also getting a ton of unwanted attention for existing as a girl. So I threw myself into every theatrical discipline I could find, as long as it was behind the scenes.
Magic remained a huge part of my life, but it was a personal pursuit. But I didn’t just want to be around. I wanted to contribute.
In 2018, I met Richard Kaufman, long-time Editor in Chief of Genii Magazine, the world’s longest-running independent magazine for magicians. Richard asked me to write a few profiles, which were 6,000-word monsters in those days. I’d finally found a way to do the two things I’d loved longest—magic and writing—at the same time.
Soon, I joined the masthead as Associate Editor.
I wrote “The Eye,” the magazine’s long-standing monthly news column.
I contributed a number of features and cover stories for the next three years.
Derren Brown’s Secret
”Perfection. It really should be a cover story for New York Magazine or in The New Yorker. But I’ll take it!”
– Genii Editor in Chief
The Shy, Scary, Sacred Riana
“Sophisticated work. It’s a great piece and certainly some of the best writing in the magazine these days.”
– Genii Reader
Olmedini el Mago Magnifico!
“I’m not crying, you’re crying.”
– Genii Reader
Lisa Menna Starts A Superstition
“I’ve been involved with magic since the ‘70s, and that’s one of the best pieces I’ve read in any magic journal.”
– Genii Reader
In 2021, I stepped away, heartbroken. My issue wasn’t so much with the magazine as with the magic industry in general. While every artistic community was reckoning with its racist, sexist, bigoted past and present, magicians were putting their fingers in their ears and pulling up the castle drawbridge.
Magic and I had a pretty dramatic breakup. I was disgusted by the industry, and by many of the magicians in it. I needed a break from the toxicity and the cult of personality. They kept saying magic wasn’t the place for politics, but boy did they love their political in-fighting.
Then in 2024, Julie Eng took the helm as Executive Director of Genii Enterprises. She asked if I would sign on to her vision of a modern magic media organization. She knew about my “radical” perspective, and she asked me to help pull us into the future.
When the new Genii launched in February 2025, I re-joined the masthead as Editor at Large with a mandate to investigate magic’s artistic and cultural influence. Magic is having yet another surge among the lay public. What does that moment mean, and what can magicians make of it? That remains to be seen.
