Julie Eng, Genii's New Executive Director
In the first episode of The Magic Book Podcast, host Adrian Tennant interviews Julie Eng, renowned magicienne and the new Executive Director of Genii magazine. Julie shares her journey growing up in a magical family, her work on major publications preserving magic's rich history, and her vision for Genii's future. She discusses the challenges and joys of magic book publishing, her most cherished magic book, and her passion for advancing the art of magic through community-building and education.
Transcript
Coming up in this episode of The Magic Book Podcast.
Julie Eng [:I love magic, and I love this community, and I love magic history. I love contemporary magic. I love what magic has done for me, and I've seen the power of what it's done for others. And I think it has a lot to give the world, and I want to be a part of that.
Adrian Tennant [:You're listening to The Magic Book Podcast, conversations about classic and contemporary books that teach, illuminate, and celebrate the art of magic. I'm your host, Adrian Tennant, a lifelong student of magic and mentalism, occasional performer, and longtime book collector. Thanks for joining me. Welcome to the very first episode of The Magic Book Podcast. To launch this new venture, I'm joined by the one and only Jule Eng. If you don't know Julie, well, she's a highly accomplished magician based in Toronto, Canada. Born into a family deeply immersed in magic, she's been performing for over 3 decades. Since 2004, Julie has served as the Executive Director of Magicana, a Canadian organization dedicated to the exploration and advancement of magic as a performing art.
Adrian Tennant [:Under her leadership, Magicana has developed numerous educational programs introducing magic to diverse audiences. Julie is also the editor of Magicol, a journal of magic history and collectibles, and with Magicana has been instrumental in the creation of 2 landmark projects. The magic of Johnny Thompson, and most recently The Rich Cabinet Collection, a 9 volume set of essays by the late Dr. Eddie Dawes. Julie's contributions to magic have earned her recognition from the Society of American Magicians, she's been featured in all of the major magic publications, and she's been a regular presenter at magic live. Julie, welcome to The Magic Book Podcast. It's truly an honor to have you as my very first guest.
Julie Eng [:Well, it's an honor for me, Adrian. Thank you for the invitation.
Adrian Tennant [:Your father, Tony Eng, was a well known magician. How did he influence your interest in magic?
Julie Eng [:I was literally born into this. And because of my dad, I had this magical childhood. I was involved right from the very beginning. I have a younger sister. We're very close in age, only 17 months apart. As far back as my sister and I can remember, we've been on stage with my parents doing some part of the show. So I've always had magic in my blood, and we grew up with it around us in the home. And everywhere we went, everyone knew my dad was a magician, so there was magic happening at all times every single moment of my childhood.
Adrian Tennant [:What was it like growing up when your dad owned a magic shop?
Julie Eng [:That's a very good question. It's my whole childhood, my high school years, it was all very fun and chaotic and normal, very normal too. But when your dad's a magician and everyone knows who your dad is, especially in our small community where I grew up, the schools, for example, all the teachers knew who my dad was. They've all had him down at the school for fundraising shows, or they all came to the shop. Everyone wanted a either a birthday party or they had a 50th birthday party to go to or they needed a magic trick because they have a family event and they wanted to be able to do something for their family. So, you know, my dad had this very strong presence. I grew up on the West Coast of Canada on, Vancouver Island in the capital city of Victoria, British Columbia. It's a small town, but a big town.
Julie Eng [:It's a capital city. So it's also a port city where a lot of people come, and, there was a lot of tourists in that part of Victoria where my father had a shop. So my dad, he was the ambassador of Victoria. You know, he he was a self proclaimed ambassador of the city, but he was very proud of the city. So he would be a part of that community, and he'd be a big attraction with the magic shop. But he also loved people. So my sister and I, we had this really beautiful childhood of constantly being a part of this circus.
Adrian Tennant [:Julie, what was your first magic book?
Julie Eng [:That's another great question. I'm very lucky. You know, my dad, being a magician, had a little library and he was constantly reaching for it. And what's interesting is that when I went back to look at them as an adult, I saw how he would sign his name inside the book. First, it was his Chinese name, like his stage name, and then he had his name and then his formal like, it's you could see the maturity, in other words, of a person who is moving through his magic career. So I had this very wonderful bookshelf to draw from. But as a kid, where do you go? You go with what inspires you and what drives you and what captures your imagination. And in our house, we had this magic bookshelf, and it was with a an encyclopedia set.
Julie Eng [:We had a Britannica set. And I think we had something very similar to The Encyclopedia of Magic. And I'm holding this up for Adrian to see, for your listeners, Adrian. This is The Encyclopedia of Magic by Dr. Edwin A. Dawes and Arthur Setterington. It's a great book. I remember this book really, really well, and I'll tell you why. It's because when you flip through it, it's a combination of great history and magic, contemporary magic of the time. You learned magic, but it had these great images that just captures the imagination.
Julie Eng [:And for me, that was very powerful because as a kid, you see a range of magicians in here too. You see female partners. You see Shimada, for example, is in here. He had a very strong influence to how my father would think about performance, and I think that just rubbed off on me. So it's a really great book. As I say, when I look back, I I think we had a slightly different version in the bookshelf at home. I happen to have this one here in Toronto. But wow.
Julie Eng [:Like, the the the cover of this particular volume has Mark Wilson floating and levitating Nani Darnell. It's just it's beautiful. And if that doesn't capture an imagination of a kid, I don't know what will.
Adrian Tennant [:And a British book at that.
Julie Eng [:Lucky me.
Adrian Tennant [:I've heard you say that you weren't delivered by a stalk, but pulled out of a hat. So, Julie, was there ever any doubt about your career path?
Julie Eng [:Well, it seems that I was pretty destined to be in this world and in this career track, but, yeah, that's the other part of it. Starting in magic so early and being a part of this world so very young, it put me through my own experience of growing up in a household of what are you supposed to do when you're growing up? You What are you supposed to do when you're growing up? You're supposed to expand your horizons and go further and learn other things. So I felt like it was an interesting time because I think for me, I don't think for my sister, but for me, my experience was I had this idea that, you know, I was always the daughter of Tony. Right? I had this expectation in front of me. I had a reputation that always preceded me with my dad, and I adored my father. Of course, I did, and he was a great mentor to me as well. But I think it was also really difficult, as I look back now as an adult, to my younger self to adjust, to have the self confidence to be an individual, And I think there was some confusion about my own identity because everyone told me I was Tony's daughter. So, you know, you adopt that kind of thinking and way of being.
Julie Eng [:And I think it did give me a kind of an identity crisis when I was in my teen years. But it's like every teenager. You know, it's hard trying to figure out who you are. So there was a point where I sort of started to step back a little bit. It wasn't sure if that was for me. But at the same time, I also found it was the right place for me because my dad had me a part of the show at such a young age. I did actually feel very comfortable there, and I helped him a lot. I was on stage a lot.
Julie Eng [:So I was learning behind the scenes and on stage with him, but not having that thrust of responsibility of being the performer all the time. So I could observe, I could feel, and see what it's like. And I think that was a very good experience for me to learn.
Adrian Tennant [:You did go to college, and you studied commerce.
Julie Eng [:Mhmm.
Adrian Tennant [:How did you balance your magical interest with your formal education?
Julie Eng [:Well, that's, again, thanks to my parents. By the time I was getting ready to go to university in Victoria, my dad had really established the magic shop by then, Tony's Trick and Joke Shop. And it was a great place for me to also learn. And it looked very natural for me to take a commerce degree and then to turn around my business skills and to push the shop forward. And that is something that was an interesting challenge for me because I wanted to learn more about the business world and yet I had this very interesting, you know, playground if you will, an experimental field to to play in. And it became really interesting as I got into studies because, of course, as one progresses through university, the classes go from very large to very small, but the responsibility of presentations, papers and so for the commerce degree that I had, it was all based on report writing, analysis, and presenting our findings. So presentation for me is the last thing I had to worry about, and I found that was a really natural place for me to be. I was very good in being in front of people.
Julie Eng [:I was very relaxed, and I then found that obviously using something like magic to sort of leverage my points that I wanted to to express or to make it memorable. All those great things that magic can do for public speaking, I was learning and found that that really gave me some terrific advantage. And I got more confident because of that, and I really found at that point, maybe this magic thing is really good for me. And I started to perform a little bit more too just outside of school, and I think that also showed me the viability and the commercial prospects. But it was challenging at the same time because I'm still comparing myself to my father. Right? I don't think the world necessarily was, but I was. So it was a challenging balance, but I found that university And I think that's really when I discovered magic for myself. Magic always chose me up until that point.
Julie Eng [:So now I got to choose it, and I found that that became a very powerful step forward, and I really haven't looked back.
Adrian Tennant [:What led you to join Magicana?
Julie Eng [:Once again, let's thank my dad for that opportunity. Believe it or not, it's a convergence of my dad knowing somebody here in Toronto when I was still living in Victoria, British Columbia. It's miles and miles away, 5 hour flight. And after I finished university, I was coming to Toronto to visit a friend of mine from university. She had just moved here and she was getting settled in a new job. And I thought it'd be fun to come and visit her. So the one thing my father is famous for is when he was traveling around wherever he went, he would pick up the phone and call a friend in that town and just say, hi. I'm in town.
Julie Eng [:I just wanted to say hi. So because I was going to Toronto, he picked up the phone and called his friend, David Ben. And he said, David, my daughter's coming, and she's probably gonna pop by and say hi. So David was very gracious, and he extended that invitation to me to a lunch. And one conversation led to another, and before I knew it, I had signed a contract to come and work in Toronto to work with David, and it was a big moment for me to make this choice because in Victoria, I had this very set routine. You know, I could do a lot of shows in a weekend. I would do very well at Christmas time. The shop was busy.
Julie Eng [:You know, my life was set, but it was very restricted. And here, this opportunity came. I could reject all of that and try something new, and I was intimidated by it. But my father being dad just said, you know what? It's time you try something else. Like, he was so confident in who he was. He wanted something else for me, and so he really pushed me to go further and to try something else and not be stuck inside of a routine that was predetermined by him. So I I can't see that now as an adult as I look back on all of this, but, wow, what a selfless kind of act to push my career first. And he pushed me knowing I think that other things were destined for me.
Julie Eng [:Maybe he couldn't define them, but he he knew David, for example, was doing the show, and he said, you're gonna learn things that I cannot teach you. I cannot teach you anymore, he told me, and that scared me. So he took me from that place, and he put me into a new place. He set me up with someone like a new mentor, like David, and David then had hired me for this show. And I was only supposed to do the show for 3 months, And it's been almost 30 years now. So 3 months, 30 years, I don't know. It it works out in the end.
Adrian Tennant [:Well, we'll talk about your major publishing projects in a moment, but how did your role at Magicana evolve over the time you were there?
Julie Eng [:It's such a great evolution for me because I was invited to be a part of a project. It was part of the community projects that Magicana was working on. But before that, David was still doing these theater shows, so I was involved with that. So I got involved with production very early as early as 2000. But off and on, as projects came, we worked on them together. And then as they rounded off, I went away and and David would work on other things. But an opportunity came up in 2004 where we could take a community idea where we would bring magic to children in at risk communities and present them with this opportunity to learn magic and to really try to break down barriers and to give children an opportunity to learn and to see the power of magic, not just having sleight of hand, which was always fun, but the power of presentation, the power of knowledge, the power of practice, and the power of self esteem and self confidence. So this is something I could definitely get behind, and we got really involved in 2004 with that.
Julie Eng [:And then that expanded to a seniors program. So we worked at one end of the spectrum to the other. Again, just very project oriented. So things would ramp up and then they would complete, and another project would ramp up, and then they would finish off. And as that happened between 2004 to 2,005, it it got very exciting because things were growing, and we were applying for grants. And they were coming through some major grants to really build infrastructure for Magicanna to manage these projects to scale them. And that was my job scaling them. I was a program director.
Julie Eng [:But as I did that, then more projects came up. They mushroom out of magic. And that got into production and then more, you know, company management, and then there was publication projects. And then it just I look back, Adrian, over 20 years, and then it's amazing at how many things we have done.
Adrian Tennant [:If you're enjoying this episode of The Magic Book Podcast, please consider leaving a rating on Spotify or a review on Apple Podcasts. Thank you. Julie, let's talk about a couple of the significant publishing projects you've been involved with. Firstly, The Magic of Johnny Thompson is a 2 volume set published in 2018. It captures Johnny's lifetime of magical creations and insights, featuring over 660 pages and 1100 photographs. Can you tell us what prompted the creation of The Magic of Johnny Thompson?
Julie Eng [:That is such a great project. And it was a long project for us at Magicana, but it was long for Johnny and his coauthor, Jamy Ian Swiss, because it was done over a long period of time for a variety of reasons. 1, Johnny had so much material, and Jamy was in charge of tracking Johnny down, getting him to talk about it, writing it all up, refining it, moving to the next trick. You know, it was so crazy, and it took a long time for Jamy to build these routines and to build the history and to definitive work, and it is, of The Magic of Johnny Thompson. But Johnny had such a massive interest in magic. It was, first of all, very vast. And then on top of that, he kept refining and changing and and introducing new moves, new touches, new variations, then a whole new trick would evolve. You know? It's just that was Johnny.
Julie Eng [:He just kept going. So Jamy had a very challenging job trying to keep up with this dynamo of energy that is Johnny Thompson. But he did it, and it was challenging because, of course, through all of this, everybody's working, everybody's traveling. And Johnny and Jamy were both very busy separately living and working in their lives on top of everything else. But it I guess it was at one of our conventions here in Toronto that Magicana was hosting where Jamy and Johnny could see that they'd brought the project to a certain point, but they were ready to kind of move it to the next level. And that's when my colleague David Ben got involved, and it sounded like it was a great project for Magicana to take on. We had just published a few other books, and we're really happy with the quality and the work that we put into those, and we were associated with other books. This was a great project for us, and I was very comfortable taking on the sort of project management of it all, steering the whole thing.
Julie Eng [:So it it landed in our court, and that got to be a really interesting and dynamic project. It was constantly changing because, again, there's just so many parts to manage. It's a very diverse set of books because the magic is just so broad. It goes from close-up to illusion. Like, it's just amazing at Johnny's breadth of work. So there were definitely challenges along the way to manage all of that. Slowly but surely, we get the team together, and everyone starts refining, honing, gathering, and steering it. And I went through the design process and trying to bring things into a a look and feel that everybody could get behind, and that takes time.
Julie Eng [:You know? It's difficult to imagine what it's gonna look like. We had to get it right since it's a multivolume set. So it was also fun because working with Johnny, that was a privilege. And I knew Johnny as a kid, but I really got to know him during his visits here in Toronto with the conventions we'd hold or the productions we would do. And so he really started to trust Magicanna, the judgment of Magicanna, and he would really let us take the lead on putting things together like the book and the design, and it got very exciting when we started doing the photos, which were a whole that was a whole, experience in itself.
Adrian Tennant [:What was it like for you shooting the photographs for The Magic of Johnny Thompson?
Julie Eng [:Well, I don't live in Las Vegas for 1. So it was multiple trips out to Las Vegas. Johnny Thompson had the craziest calendar schedule for a man of his age. You know, he was constantly working or squeezing in appointments, trying to do these shots with us, and I enlisted some help. And I got a dear friend, Jason England, to to help me find space, and then we got the great, Stan Allen helped us find some more space. And because Stan's convention would allow us an opportunity to, say, use some of the convention rooms or we would be able to work on warehouses, you know, it was a lifesaver to have these spaces available. And Jason helped me set up lights, and then we would rope in another friend, R Paul Wilson, to help us. You know, it it just became a team thing, and Johnny made it so much fun.
Julie Eng [:It was challenging, but he always made it fun. And he's like this he's an old pro. He would get dressed so he's in the role. So he'd bring his suits down, and he'd have the right looks, and he's in costume. He would walk us through the trick so we knew exactly which version he was gonna do for us. So we would have to then map the trick with the photos, and I would we have to mark that down and sort of track what's going on. So while there are about 1100 photos, I I took well over 4,000. So it was quite an editing process for us back in Toronto.
Julie Eng [:However, the shooting of it was a riot because there's always these crazy shots that one has to get. And the one great thing is Johnny was like a father figure to me. So there was a lot of, hey, could you move your elbow? Oh, okay. Could you just move your face for a sec? I'm getting in his space trying to get my giant camera all around him, and he's holding this ridiculous set of, I don't know, multiple breaks or 3 buckles in a row. Like, it's crazy with the some of the moves he would do that I had to capture. And so there's Jason trying to give me some more light and me crowding on John. I have described it as trying to do some oddball magic twister game. You know, trying to find the right combinations, but we did it.
Julie Eng [:And Johnny wouldn't quit. We would go easily 12 hours, easily, because I'd only have so much time in Las Vegas. So we'd set everything up, and he'd show up, and he would just plow through this. And it was amazing because I had to get these shots per trip. I mean, I bought 4 trips to Vegas. So it was really a joy to work with him. It was crazy. There were long hours.
Julie Eng [:It was very difficult. Some of the times, I had to retake a bunch of pictures because he's making me laugh so hard. You know, he's telling us a great joke or it's always a great story. One of the effects has a little parakeet. So Johnny, you know, borrowed a a beautiful bird from Lance his friend Lance Burton, and so there's the bird. The bird The bird was on very displeased with us. So we were chasing this this he got out. And, oh my goodness.
Julie Eng [:So everyone's doing their best, but you hear this loud cry from Johnny goes, oh my god, and he didn't say that. He really Mhmm. Mhmm. Okay. The little bird's beak had gotten Johnny's finger. So, but we got him. Safe and sound. We returned him safe and sound.
Julie Eng [:The bird, not Johnny. But, I mean, it's crazy, right, doing a magic shoot like this. But we got birds. We had bunnies. We didn't use the bunny in the end, but we had coffee. Jason got me a lot of a lot of corona as well.
Adrian Tennant [:Let's shift gears now and talk about The Rich Cabinet Collection, a 9 volume set compiling 500 magic history essays by Dr. Eddie Dawes originally contributed, of course, to The Magic Circular over a period of 5 decades. Julie, you seem to enjoy big audacious challenges. Can you explain what this project entailed?
Julie Eng [:So I thought The Magic of Johnny Thompson was difficult and challenging, and it was. And I was really proud of it when it came out, and I thought, wow. I could never do that again. And then this 9 volume set project shows up on my desk. It's one of those things. My colleague David Ben would say, I've got a good idea. And then it somehow becomes my projects. So we were in a meeting one day, and we were talking about the rich cabinet columns, and I hadn't seen them.
Julie Eng [:I mean, I'd seen them. I was familiar with them, but I hadn't read them. And it turns out David, like a lot of collectors had, is sort of segregate those columns and then collect them in their own separate file. And he had a pretty big file. But I don't have them all, he said. I said, well, how many are there? And then the next thing you know, we're calling Dr. Dawes. Eddie, wouldn't that be a great thing if we could collate all of your essays and into this one? And it turns out Eddie had tried variations of this project. As you know, various forms had taken shape, and it is a really challenging project for many, many reasons.
Julie Eng [:The size, first of all, it's huge. It's over 3,000 somewhat pages, our version. But as you said, it's written from 1972 to 2020. So the breadth of material, the size, then there's the correlation of it because some stories are attached to other stories many decades later or vice versa. Like, there's a series of them one after another. How are you gonna deal with all of that? So there was a lot of challenges that came up. But as we were discussing the idea of this and we learned about other versions of it, you know, Eddie shared with us, this is something that he really wanted was a collected set. You know? It's a pretty big accomplishment for him to have written 500 articles.
Julie Eng [:And at the time, he hadn't finished writing them because the conversation started end of 2016 early, and we were supposed to start in 2017. And for a variety of reasons, the project had to be juggled, and then The Magic of Johnny Thompson had to get finished. So my nonagenarian had to wait for me to catch up to him, and he did. So Eddie is in Hull in England, but Adrian, his son Adrian, was visiting Hull at the same time. He lives in America now. So I was invited to go to Dane Hill to basically absorb some of the collection and to get a sense of what the articles had in terms of illustrations and where the inspiration came from. So I'd never been to Dane Hill before. Oh, I and and people were starting to prepare me before I went on my trip, but nothing can prepare anyone for that experience.
Julie Eng [:And it was so special, and it was one of the biggest private collections in the UK. So it's a huge, huge, huge collection of unbelievable stuff. And we were, like, having these treasure trove discovery after treasure trove discovery. And luckily, Eddie's son, Adrian, was there to take down boxes and to open up cupboards and to pull down more boxes and then to open yet another box. It just it was a magic trick in itself how, a, all of it fit in the house, and, b, Eddie Dawes knew where every single piece belonged. He knew which room, which drawer, which cut I mean, he's famous for it. When we started digging around and I started to get a sense of how big this project was, I definitely got intimidated. But with the Dawes as your guide, no one can go wrong because Eddie took it very methodically 1 by 1.
Julie Eng [:He said, why don't we start at the beginning? It was such a great it was such a great idea. I said, okay. So we pulled out the first rich cabinet. He had them in a collected form, and we started going through them, and it was so joyful to see how we could find things. He would tell me about things. We would capture those things either in a scan or a photograph, and we'd move on. So for a couple of days, we did this. And, of course, I only scratched the surface.
Julie Eng [:It was just a smidgen of what I needed, but it sure got me going. And the next thing I know, we're coming home, we're working on the design, we're working on the look, and how do we handle these challenges? What about this timeline? And all of those things started to be discussed. And Eddie and his son, Adrian, would always get on to a Skype call with me and walk me through stuff, and we would just chat about it. We would brainstorm about solutions. It was such a joy to work with this family and to figure out this project. But a a long time had passed between 2017 and when I started really getting the designs nailed down. So Eddie had aged a little bit, and it was getting harder and harder for him to hear me, And it was more challenging for him to travel. So, you know, we did a lot of it by Skype.
Julie Eng [:And luckily, his family also helps communicate showing what I was up to and getting edits done. He edited. He went through all 500 articles a couple of times. So we were able to add updated information, new information. In fact, I had volumes 34 sent up to the printers. Everybody had approved everything. It was at the printers, and he wanted a change for volume 4 because new information had come to light. And he goes, I want it in there.
Julie Eng [:So for Eddie, I pulled the page, we made the correction, and we did it. So that was quite something to work with that level of professionalism and his devotion to the work, to the truth, to his research, and I got the joy to also share the material that the community was offering us as the publisher to put into the rich cabinet. That was a really big part of the community stepping up and saying, I have that. I don't mind giving a scan for Eddie's project. All kinds of people who both knew Eddie and didn't know Eddie, they would contribute to the project. It was really incredible to me how people recognize the importance of this particular set of books. So it was quite a project that spawned quite a few years, but we're at the final end.
Adrian Tennant [:Right. And a slightly sad footnote, of course, is that Dr. Eddie Dawes didn't see the final volumes.
Julie Eng [:No. Sadly, very sadly. How can I say this? He was 90 96, 97, but, you know, he'd weathered so much. Right? He'd been through so much, and he had an illness that he came back from, and everybody thought, oh, that was not good, but he had gotten better. And things looked actually quite good. But then he caught a cold, and it was just one of those things. You just didn't expect to sort of escalate so fast in the sense of of seriousness. But, you know, I guess the previous illness had definitely taken a toll on poor Eddie.
Julie Eng [:He was such a trooper. We were corresponding about the book. He'd seen everything digitally of volume 3 and volume 4. And I received a set from the printer, and it was, like, I think, a Friday. And I had flipped through the book, and it looked great. They'd rushed it down to me. I patched it right back up. I ran back to the UPS store to ship it over to the UK so that he could see it, knowing that he was in the hospital.
Julie Eng [:And they would have been there overnight, but because he's in Hull, it needed one more day to get to Hull. And being on the Sunday, it didn't arrive, and, of course, that was when Eddie passed away. So it was sad on many fronts, but at the same time, there was some peace to know that he had passed quietly and peacefully. And, you know, it was quite a journey that I got to ride with the dolls on this particular project. And to see the vitality that Eddie brought to the project was inspiring. You know, he was just an inspiring person.
Adrian Tennant [:Well, The Rich Cabinet Collection and The Magic of Johnny Thompson, Julie, what do you hope these publications will contribute to preserving magic history?
Julie Eng [:I hope that it demonstrates the power of the magic and the legacy of their creators. You know, for Johnny, Johnny lived a life that was always dynamic, organic, and changing. He was a person of the times. He he kept up with the relevance of magic today. And so he was constantly learning, constantly working with people of all ages, and he was performing not so much in his later years, but also coaching. You know, he was teaching what he was learning and coaching and at the same time learning from the coaching. He was constant and his book reflects that. You know, the work gives you a foundation of the kind of individual that Johnny was.
Julie Eng [:It gives you a sampler of his interests, of his work, but also of his personality in many ways when you think about it. And you get to see what it takes to carve out a career in magic with the magnitude of someone like Joni Thompson. And much can be said the same for doctor Dawes. Eddie was so diligent, determined, and devoted to uncovering the truth. The majority of his research for more than half of the rich cabinet, he did in libraries, actually, in the stacks or going through microfiche. Like, we have the modern tools today. I could do it comfortably here in my home in Toronto. He was a biochemist too, a leading biochemist, and he headed up a whole department at Hull University.
Julie Eng [:Like, he had a whole other full time academic job of writing and publishing. So he would time a lot of his academic travel to budget in visiting special libraries or special collections or meeting with collectors so he could make notes on his index card by hand about the pieces that he was researching. I mean, that kind of devotion to research and to locations or to uncovering the truth, you know, about a subject, That's part of this giant legacy of this 9 book series. It's also a way of looking back at history both in context of a of a modern time and also what it was like to have that kind of entertainment in that period. I mean, he's all over the map with where he goes in terms of the visits of times in the 1600. He's in the modern 2000. It's all over the place. And it's a very friendly way to dip in and out of magic history.
Julie Eng [:These are very friendly reads. They're not dusty reads. He makes it really fresh and interesting in a very conversational way. You could see why he got obsessed with trying to dig a little bit more to find out a little bit more. And as the reader, you get kind of pulled in. You go, so what happens next? So I think for doctor Dawes' work, it's to show also that we have such a rich history in magic. The foundation is quite deep and strong and there's a lot to learn from there. And I think if we look a little bit, we can actually learn a lot about the modern magic world.
Adrian Tennant [:A reminder that you can be notified when new episodes of this podcast are published by signing up on the website at The Magic Book Podcast.com. Julie, after 2 decades at Magicana, you're leaving to become the new executive director of Genii, The Conjurors' Magazine.
Julie Eng [:Mhmm.
Adrian Tennant [:On the Magicana website, your colleague David Ben wrote, Julie is Karl Germain's Blooming Rose Bush incarnate. She started at Magicana as a seed and has now grown and blossomed into an unstoppable force for which there is truly no immovable object. That's a very nice tribute. Julie, many congratulations on your new role.
Julie Eng [:Thank you. Yes. It's very overwhelming to have this new idea, this new role, and I'm very excited.
Adrian Tennant [:I'm honored to be one of the first people to be able to quiz you about this. How did this opportunity with Genii come about?
Julie Eng [:Well, you know, I think it's a very interesting time because we're all in this transitional period. And what I mean by that is several pieces were moving on the board at the same time. For example, Richard Kaufman is now finishing up his 25th year as the editor of Genii. I mean, that in itself is a tremendous run. I think I calculated 300 issues he'll will have completed. And we just talked about a 9 volume set, so he's on his way there. And I think that with that level of devotion and what it takes to edit and to steer a magazine for that long, a monthly magazine, it was coming to a time where Richard was feeling maybe it is enough now, you know, 25 years because Richard's wanting to do Richard things. For example, he's working on the Greater Magic book, and that is just such an incredible achievement and project, and he's really exploded it into this fascinating community project in many ways, but he needs time.
Julie Eng [:He needs time to be able to work on that, and he has other books bursting in him. So that started to percolate for Richard. You know, he's thinking about changing, maybe leaving and retiring. And he has a crew that was working with him. So, you know, they have all been very devoted, but also everyone feels that pressure of that monthly deadline. And it's a killer. It's a killer. So that was brewing away, and then our work at Magicana was evolving.
Julie Eng [:We were changing. Projects were shifting. We used to do a lot of productions. We kind of steered back into publications. Then we were making another turn more like foundational giving programs, like we did with the Allan Slaight Awards. So it was dynamically everybody was shifting and moving. And what happened was as Richard signaled his retirement, the owner of Genii, Randy Pitchford, he was very gentle about it, but he said things are changing. And at Genii, I see a whole other possibility that the magazine can really become a part of something bigger.
Julie Eng [:And he started to outline a vision of what he saw, and it was very exciting because it's about expanding the idea of learning magic, being a community, being essential to magicians. So that was very interesting to hear. And when all of this started to change, when Richard did announce his retirement to Randy and here Magicana was also making shifts to move away from publishing And, you know, my role was changing there too. So it was a good opportunity for me to maybe make a a a new shift as well. We're all in this two and a half decade mark. Magicana's, you know, in its 24th year. Richard's finished at 25 years. I've been, you know, 20 years at Magicana.
Julie Eng [:Like, we were all in that. We're all ready. So my colleague David was also ready to change his role from being artistic director. He was ready to shift it a little bit and change the direction. So this all sort of moved in a very organic way in many ways. And when the opportunity was presented to me by Randy and supported by Richard, I couldn't resist because it just sounds like so much up my alley in exactly the kind of area that I'd be very interested to be a part of, and, of course, it is. I mean, I love magic and I love this community, and I love magic history. I love contemporary magic.
Julie Eng [:I love what magic has done for me, and I've seen the power of what it's done for others. And I think it has a lot to give the world, and I want to be a part of that.
Adrian Tennant [:When I heard the news and congratulated you, I think I told you I've been a Genii reader for well over 40 years. Genii's always been part of my magical life, and I'm sure for many, many, many others.
Julie Eng [:Yes. Yes. And that's the thing. Right, Adrian? Like, you've seen it change and grow too as a a long time subscriber. And I think that's what the job of that genre media should do. It's gotta shift and change to the times. So I am very excited that we have this precipice that we're all balancing on and toward and and around. So it's an exciting period right now.
Adrian Tennant [:I know people listening are gonna want me to be more specific with you, so I know it's early days. You officially take on this role from August. Correct?
Julie Eng [:Yes. I started in August.
Adrian Tennant [:Could you share your vision for Genii under your leadership?
Julie Eng [:Yeah. Sure. I'd love to. I mean, it's about shifting it from one form, the magazine, and really playing off of that and exploding it up and out and opening the doors. We want to really invite all kinds of community members into Genii. And what I mean by that is building up the the awareness of Genii as not only a magazine, but also a content provider. We have great content as you know, and we have great columnists who have wonderful insights to share. So I'm not gonna be editing the magazine.
Julie Eng [:We've brought on a new interim executive editor who is Jim Steinmeyer. And Jim and Richard are old friends. Richard had this brilliant idea to reach out to Jim to see if he'd be interested, and he was. And, we are so fortunate because it's a fairly interesting transitional period as Jim now has accepted that role and is starting to think about what does his editorship look like. He wants to take an interim role. It's to steer us into his new Genii. And I think it's definitely inside and part of the vision that we have for Genii together and as a as a group with the Pitchfords and Magic Castle Enterprises. It's about reuniting the idea of magic of the community.
Julie Eng [:So Magic Castle Enterprises, of course, owns the Magic Castle, and it's about, again, unification and bringing Genii back into that conversation. And, also, not limiting it there, but opening up the doors so that people who may not be aware of Genii can also be invited in. There's a whole new generation, I bet, that don't really know what Genii is and was. And I think that this is a great opportunity to invite them in and to maybe bring it to an online platform and to to go beyond just the digital version we have now. And that's part of my vision is to build a community and to build access. One of the neat things that we're doing with this giant shift and change is that Magicanais also supporting the shift by giving Genii the online assets that we have on our website. So we will move and migrate the screening room where you can see all these great videos of magicians of yesteryear. You can have some of the online exhibitions that we have there.
Julie Eng [:We will migrate over to a new Genii website. And that's to give people a chance to just dip their toe into a little bit of magic's history. Nothing too dense, but something interesting. There's also a a whole host of essays that give us context and insight to how to think about and to look at contemporary magic. So we want to build this space and to build upon what magic did. So not, you know, not doing more of the same, but definitely looking to new areas and expanding that and eventually bring more of the magazine's content into the digital realm. And I think that will also, as I said, not only invite people, but bring accessibility to our international friends. Postage has been a killer for publishing.
Julie Eng [:It's just been brutal. And as I tell you, as I shift 9 book sets around the world, it's really challenging. But it's hard on our international friends because they want to be a part of this news, and they want to share some news. But having it locked down to this one form of a magazine in the pages make it challenging, just cost alone. So by, again, building up this digital access, we can give people new ways of engaging with us and seeing the content for Genii. So that's just a part of it. My other job will be to grow some of the publishing division as well, and it's really exciting having the history I've had at Magicana and working with individuals that I've had the great privilege of working with. I think that there's some, again, more opportunities to share, to expand.
Julie Eng [:We can build a library that is both how to maybe we might do some history. I'm not sure yet. We have some projects percolating in the background, but the great line is I'm not at liberty to say just yet. I think your listeners might be interested. So you might watch the space.
Adrian Tennant [:I know they will. And you teased this news when we first were talking about the podcast a couple of weeks ago, and you didn't tell me a thing. So I was surprised as everybody.
Julie Eng [:Do you forget what it is I do for a living, Adrian?
Adrian Tennant [:We know we can keep secrets.
Julie Eng [:Yeah. But it's an exciting period because I think this is a chance for everyone to get a new perspective. And, you know, you've read Genii for so long now. I think you've seen a variety of different voices that have come and what that does to the magazine. Right? Bring new energy, perhaps bring, obviously, a new perspective. And I'm really excited because Jim Steinmeyer, in the pages of Geniis, very soon, will be sharing some of his vision. And I think that it will be very exciting because we're gonna look at really shifting some of the content as well. So it's gonna be quite dynamic.
Adrian Tennant [:Are you allowed to share with us when we might see the new new Genii?
Julie Eng [:Yes. I'm happy to tell you that's gonna happen, the new new Genii. The first issue will be February 2025.
Adrian Tennant [:Wow. Not that far away.
Julie Eng [:I know.
Adrian Tennant [:I mean, in publishing terms, that's that's tomorrow. I know.
Julie Eng [:It's a little scary. I know. But, I mean, Richard and his partner, Elizabeth and his associate editor, Dustin Stinett, they've done this amazing thing where they have brought Genii into this wonderful and routine. So they've paced all of their content for the next few months in this beautiful way, freeing us to have this opportunity, our new secret editorial team, to build, you know, and to think about how we want to see. So we've got a little bit of time to bond and to find that space. I can say that we are looking at shifting things around, and I'm hoping that readers will find that intriguing and interesting. And as we get closer and closer to our new Genii date, Jim and I and the pages of Genii will reveal some of those secrets.
Adrian Tennant [:Mhmm. And might we see you at Magic Live this year, Julie?
Julie Eng [:Yes. You will. I'm gonna be at Magic Live. I'm delighted to say I I'm gonna be at the Genii booth, so come on by. I hope that your listeners get a chance to swing by and ask me in person. You can ask me anything. I'm not sure what I can answer, but you can ask me anything.
Adrian Tennant [:And what will happen to Magicol?
Julie Eng [:That's a great question. Magicol, I have come to really love. This is a passion project, and one of the things you'll discover if you visit Magicana's website is David Ben has posted a lot of news about the changes happening, and one of those changes is that magical is going to be reverting to me. So not only will I be the editor, I'm going to be the publisher as well. So magical has become this really fun project as I was saying because I've gotten to know so many of the contributors and we've been able to really bring some neat stories to life and I design it. We edit it as a team, and I've got a great team of volunteers. It's really incredible at how many people contribute and work for magical because we all love it. And I'm very excited because under the tenure that Magicana has taken care of it, so that's since 2010, it's grown a lot.
Julie Eng [:It's shifted. First, it went through a design overhaul, thanks to Michael Albright, and then the content started to change, thanks to David Ben, who was its previous publisher. And, now that I've taken over, we're shifting things in new directions. I'm constantly meeting new people in this community who have great information, who've done terrific research, or have written some wonderful pieces for us. And so right now, we're just on the cusp of finishing a 3 part series by Gary Hunt and Michael Claxton on The Escapists and of that female escapists from years before vaudeville. So right up to vaudeville. So it's a really fascinating look at women, how they carved out their careers, the the fascination with escape artists artistry for women, and how did they get in and out of that literally and figuratively. And the different characters who pop in and out and what happens to them.
Julie Eng [:It's really quite remarkable, and that's Gary Hunt. He he really took a deep dive into this and with some research work with Michael Claxton, the pair of of our series, The Escapists, they have put together this incredible collection of information. So I'm happy to say that we're just about to do the 3rd part. So my first issue is the publisher will be issue number 200. And I'm very excited to say, you know, obviously, we'll have that and a whole lot
Adrian Tennant [:more. Excellent. I'm really excited about all the news you've shared with us, Julie. Well, as this is The Magic Book Podcast, you told us about your first magic book. Julie, what is your most cherished magic book and why?
Julie Eng [:That one's hard. That one's really hard because I have a lot of cherished books. I've received some from friends. I've received some from my father. I've worked on some. I found some. I think that one that moves me because of its genesis and how I was involved is one called Buried Treasure. And I guess aptly named and that was a special publication that Magicana did for our conference, 31 Faces North, and it was for our last conference.
Julie Eng [:It turns out to be our last conference. And it was a book where all of the attendees contributed a piece, and then we had this real what they thought was a good buried treasure, something that wasn't necessarily the best trick, but what was something that they thought was a great buried treasure, and they submitted it. And we all worked on it from different angles. So there's contributions, there's illustrations, there's publications. But when we brought everybody to the conference to hand out each copy, it's a beautiful book. Michael Albright helped us design the cover, and I designed the interior. But when we came to that point where everyone got a copy, it became like a high school annual. And the tradition is everyone's gotta sign their piece.
Julie Eng [:Right? So we were, like, signing our yearbooks. And I have one of the most treasured sets of autographs and inscriptions because of that, because we got to work together. We had our friends gather together, and they wrote really beautiful and meaningful things for me, and it means a lot. You know, it's because it's about friendship. It's about magic, magic bringing people together, magic healing old wounds, and magic really defining us as a community in all the good that we see magic with, you know, all the good that it contributes. So that's, I think, one of my most beautiful treasures.
Adrian Tennant [:Julie, thank you so much for being my very first guest on The Magic Book Podcast.
Julie Eng [:It was my pleasure. Thanks for having me. I feel it's a real honor.
Adrian Tennant [:I've learned so much from Julie in this episode. How growing up in a magical family shaped her career and passion for the art, the challenges and rewards of publishing landmark works that preserve Magic's rich history, and, of course, Julie's exciting vision for the future of Genii Magazine and the magic community at large. I hope you enjoyed listening as much as I enjoyed speaking with Julie. You've been listening to the first episode of The Magic Book Podcast. You'll find a transcript with timestamps and links to resources mentioned in this episode on our website at The Magic Book Podcast.com. If you have a question or would like to suggest a topic for a future episode, please contact me, adrian at The Magic Book Podcast dot com. You can also leave a voicemail on the website's contact page. Since this is the first episode, I want to say a huge thank you again to Julie for trusting me to help share her exciting announcement.
Adrian Tennant [:Thanks also to Kieran McCrae of Platform Podcasting for the coaching, Tom at Podcastpages.io for tech support, and Rhett Withey Designs for the podcast visual branding. But most of all, thank you for listening to The Magic Book Podcast. I've been your host, Adrian Tennant. Until next time. Goodbye.
