NEW LONDON, Connecticut, USA, September 26, 2026 — The Milbourne Christopher Foundation presented its 2026 awards Saturday evening at the Garde Arts Center. Nine honorees were recognized for their contributions to magic as performers, writers, publishers, preservationists, and inventors. Their work ranges from close-up magic and mentalism to stage manipulation and original fire effects, magazine and book publishing, and Houdini scholarship.
The winners were announced in May. On Saturday, guests signed in at the Garde next to a sketch of Christopher before the 5 p.m. presentation.
David E. Haversat, chairman of the foundation, and Thomas A. Ewing, vice chair, presented the awards, and honorees spoke from the podium.
The program also included a surprise. The Society of American Magicians presented its highest distinction, Honorary Member, to Marlene Szulczewski Clark.
The night closed with Magic Rocks!, a family illusion show headlined by last year’s Illusionist Award winners Leon Etienne and Chelsea LaCongo.
A remarkable magician’s legacy
Milbourne Christopher served in Europe during World War II as a “Soldier-Sorcerer.” In 1951 he revived M-U-M as a separate publication for The Society of American Magicians and edited it for five years. He served as the Society’s national president from 1957 to 1958 and created and starred in the first prime-time network television magic special, which aired on NBC. He died in 1984 at age 70.
After his death, his widow, Maurine Christopher (1920–2013), established the foundation in his memory. Its purpose is to encourage excellence, originality, and leadership in magic and to keep conjuring on a level with dance, drama, comedy, and music. It was incorporated in New York State in 1991, is funded by donations, and is chartered to keep Christopher’s classic books in print, including his Illustrated History of Magic and his Houdini biographies.
The foundation’s award categories follow the shape of Christopher’s career. They honor achievement in performing, writing, publishing, preservation, and invention, and the judges may add categories or leave some unawarded in a given year. Ewing chairs a judges panel that includes Foundation chairman Haversat, along with Tony Clark, Paul Mayer, Kenneth Trombly, Rob Allen, and Mike Miller. Each winner received a plaque, a handcrafted wand, and a commemorative coin.
This year’s honorees join a roster that includes Siegfried & Roy, David Copperfield, Lance Burton, Harry Blackstone Jr., Channing Pollock, Mark and Nani Wilson, Milt Larsen, Jeff McBride, Shin Lim, Eugene Burger, Max Maven, and Jim Steinmeyer.
Literary Award: Paul Romhany
Paul Romhany, 57, was born in Auckland, New Zealand. He earned a music degree from the University of Auckland and later a piano certificate from London’s Royal College of Music, though theater remained his real passion. He is now based in Qualicum Beach, British Columbia, Canada.
Romhany is a masterful comedy and close-up magician, widely known for his performances as Charlie Chaplin, and has headlined on cruise lines since 1990. He is a member of The Magic Circle. In 2014 he became the first person to receive the Robert-Houdin Award from Stevens Magic Emporium, which recognized him as the hardest-working person in magic. In 2015 he received the Grand Master of Magic Award, New Zealand’s highest honor for a magician. In 2023 he received the Academy of Magical Arts Literary and Media Excellence Award.
Romhany is publisher, editor in chief, and CEO of Vanish Magic Magazine, which he describes as the largest trade magazine for magicians.
He has authored more than 50 titles, from full-length books to booklets. They range from Stand-Up Magic, a 480-page collection of 30 of his stage routines, to The Real Deal, a career guide for working magicians with advice from 52 professional contributors. He compiled Mental Epic Compendium, which gathers more than 54 routines built on Hen Fetsch’s classic, and also writes the Pro Series, a line of booklets each devoted to a single routine. Alongside Ken Ring, he co-authored Pawmistry: How to Read Your Cat’s Paws, a book for general readers published by Penguin Random House’s Ten Speed Press.
As CEO of book publisher Vanish Press, Romhany has designed, published, and produced dozens of books for authors worldwide. The imprint recently published the award-winning book The Power of Magical Women by Connie Boyd, who is a 2025 Milbourne Christopher Foundation Award of Excellence recipient.
Romhany, who was visibly moved as he addressed the crowd, said he still sees himself as “that little 8-year-old boy back in New Zealand” who read every magic book and magazine he could find. “This award is proof that the dreams we carry as children really can come true,” he said. He grew most emotional as he dedicated the award to his mother, his “number one supporter” since he was a boy, and accepted it “on behalf of my mother and every child who has ever opened a book, discovered the world of possibility and dared to dream.”
You can see video of his acceptance speech here.
Rising Star Award: TJ Salta
TJ Salta, 25, has had a very big year. In February, the Connecticut native won Netflix’s rebooted Star Search and its $500,000 grand prize, as Conjurly reported. The finale was decided entirely by viewer votes, and fellow magician Harry Merlin Piper finished second. For his final performance, Salta made the judges’ rings vanish and brought them back, the last one delivered from above by his hawk, Messiah. When host Anthony Anderson asked what the show meant to him, Salta answered, “This is real magic right here.”
Salta grew up in Norwalk. He knew a few tricks from his grandfather, but he did not take magic seriously until a lacrosse injury to his hip left him immobilized in high school. As a freshman, he started performing for friends in the stands at a football game, and soon the crowd was watching him instead of the game.
He won Connecticut’s Got Talent in 2018 and studied entrepreneurship at Quinnipiac University. While still a student, he landed a role in Cirque du Soleil’s Mad Apple in Las Vegas. He has also performed at Super Bowl LVI, the NFL Draft, and the Stanley Cup.
“It was truly an honor to receive the Rising Star Award,” Salta told Conjurly. “To me, it’s a beautiful reminder of why I fell in love with magic in the first place: The ability to connect with people and make them feel something. Magic is an art form that transcends language and culture, and there’s something incredibly special about being able to create a genuine connection with anyone, anywhere.”
Salta sees Star Search as a beginning. “I want to ride this wave and give people the magic they want,” he told Tudum, Netflix’s official fan site, after the win. “I’m ready to give the world a magic experience. That’s my dream.” He called the win a “first step” toward that goal. The Milbourne Christopher Foundation Rising Star Award puts even more eyes on Salta, all waiting to see what he does next.
Update, September 29, 2026: After this story was published, Salta told Conjurly he will debut his first self-produced magic show, Unity, in New Jersey this winter.
Close-up Award: Jim Sisti
Jim Sisti, 69, only needed to travel an hour from his home in Beacon Falls, Connecticut, to collect his award in New London. He has worked as a professional magician for more than 30 years, and his mix of comedy magic and mind reading has taken him from nightspots and comedy clubs to the off-Broadway stage. For the past 23 years, he and his wife, Sandy, have been the resident magicians at Quassy Amusement Park on Lake Quassapaug in Middlebury, Connecticut.
Among working close-up performers, Sisti is best known for The Magic Menu. He launched it in 1990 as a journal for restaurant, bar, and strolling magicians, and each issue carried advice, stories, reviews, and effects. Contributors included Eugene Burger, Michael Ammar, Michael Close, David Acer, Jay Sankey, and Doc Eason. L&L Publishing later collected its first ten years in two hardbound volumes.
Sisti has written three books on magic, contributed to Magic for Dummies, and appeared in several instructional DVDs. He has also worked as a consultant on A&E’s Mindfreak with Criss Angel and on the Long Wharf Theatre’s production of Tom Stoppard’s Travesties starring Sam Waterston.
In 2002 he co-founded Osterlind Mysteries with mentalist Richard Osterlind to bring Osterlind’s creations to the magic community. The company currently sells more than 100 books and effects.
“I’m deeply appreciative and genuinely humbled to receive this award,” Sisti told Conjurly. “To be included among such stellar company — past and present — is both thrilling and profoundly meaningful. I also want to congratulate my fellow recipients across the various disciplines.”
Mentalist Award: Mind2Mind
Few acts in magic have had a stronger 12 months than Mind2Mind. The duo is James Harrington, 39, and Marina Liani, 35, a British-Ukrainian married couple who met in 2017 and have performed together as Mind2Mind since 2018. They are usually based in Dubai.
In 2025 they won gold at the FISM World Championships in Italy. They are only the fourth mentalism act in FISM’s 77-year history to take its top honor. They then won the 2026 Academy of Magical Arts award for Stage Magician of the Year at The Magic Castle.
In June they opened a limited-run residency at Azul, a lounge inside Fontainebleau Las Vegas.
American TV audiences first met them in 2022. On Season 17 of America’s Got Talent, Liani correctly named the remaining battery level on Sofía Vergara’s phone, and the act earned four yes votes. They had earlier earned a Golden Buzzer on Ukraine’s Got Talent and reached its finals. They returned in 2026 for Season 21 of America’s Got Talent as James & Marina and performed in the auditions, judges’ callbacks, and quarterfinals.
The couple told Conjurly what the award means to them. “Milbourne Christopher spent his life keeping the history of this art, so to have our names on something that carries his means so much,” Harrington said. “To be recognized by people who really know how hard what we do really is – is a different kind of feeling,” Liani added.
Ambassador of Magic Award: Scott Wells
Scott Wells, 66, built his ambassadorship one conversation at a time. Since 2011 he has hosted The Magic Word, a free podcast made for magicians and about magicians. Weekly interviews plus daily reports from the conventions he covers have brought it close to 1,000 episodes. In May 2024 the Academy of Magical Arts gave him a Special Fellowship for the podcast, citing the fellowship it builds among entertainers. At FISM 2025 in Turin, The Magic Word was nominated in the new online magic competition for Best Magic Podcaster and Best Magic Newsletter.
Wells is a full-time professional based in the Houston area, with more than 40 years in magic and business. He is a four-time winner of Houston’s Magician of the Year award, presented by the local Society of American Magicians assembly. He is also a Member of the Inner Magic Circle with Gold Star. He has performed at The Magic Castle and at Monday Night Magic off-Broadway, and he served as entertainment director for Houston’s Magic Island. His corporate clients include ConocoPhillips and Merrill Lynch, and in November 2021 the Society of American Magicians featured his career in M-U-M.
“What a memorable evening among such august friends,” Wells wrote on Facebook after the ceremony. He said he was thankful to receive “the moniker of Ambassador of Magic.”
Masters Award: Peter Samelson
Peter Samelson, 77, insists that he doesn’t do magic; he only helps people see it. The New York Times called him “the soft-spoken conceptualist of sorcery.” He is an Associate of the Inner Magic Circle with Silver Star, one of the highest and most respected live performance degrees awarded by The Magic Circle, and he has received a Merlin Award for Lifetime Achievement. He co-founded Monday Night Magic, the longest-running off-Broadway magic show in New York. He also created and starred in three acclaimed one-man off-Broadway shows: The Magician, PaperWork, and Radnevsky’s Real Magic.
Samelson is equally known for designing magic for other people’s productions. With Hal Meyers, he created illusions for the films What About Bob? and Whispers in the Dark. He created magic for Sam Mendes’s productions of The Cherry Orchard and The Winter’s Tale, staged at BAM and London’s Old Vic, and for the Broadway productions of Leap of Faith and Harvey. His other credits include the national tour of Pippin, the musical Houdini, Tom Stoppard’s Travesties, and Menotti’s opera The Consul.
He has performed atop the Great Wall of China and for Princess Stephanie of Monaco. Samelson has appeared twice on Penn & Teller: Fool Us. After his first appearance, Penn told him, “You are one of the greatest magicians alive.”
His 1984 book, Theatrical Close-Up, published by Mike Caveney’s Magical Publications, set out his ideas on theater and magic. It has long been out of print but has a cult-like following.
His influence on other performers runs deep. Jamy Ian Swiss, who edited the book, first saw Samelson perform at the Tannen’s Magic Jubilee in 1976 and has written that those ten minutes changed his life. Swiss has called Samelson the most influential magician most people have never heard of, and credits his presentation of the Snowstorm in China with turning a pretty flourish into an emotional piece of theater.
Samelson told Conjurly, “It is difficult to adequately express my gratitude to the Milbourne Christopher Foundation for the recognition and for the honor to be included in this group of remarkable and accomplished magicians.”
True to form, Samelson turned his acceptance speech into a piece of theater built around a magic effect. You can see video of his acceptance presentation here.
Award of Excellence: Juliana Chen
Juliana Chen’s path into magic began in ballet and acrobatics. She entered the Hunan School of Ballet and Acrobatics at 12, danced as a ballerina, and then became a foot juggler with the China Acrobatic Troupe. Two leg injuries ended that work. While in the hospital, she saw the Japanese master Shimada perform on television, and that performance inspired her to become a magician.
She joined the Guangzhou Acrobatic Troupe in 1984 and began focusing fully on magic. She won the IBM gold medal in 1992 and the Grand Prix at Spain’s national magic congress in 1996. In 1997 she won first place in manipulation at FISM. She was the first woman and the first Chinese magician to win FISM gold with a solo act. That win earned her the nickname “the First Lady of Magic.” She became an official FISM judge in 2015. She has since moved to Las Vegas and been inducted into the SAM Hall of Fame. The Academy of Magical Arts awarded her the Performing Fellowship in 2023.
A May 2026 month-long residency as a Resident Artist at The Magic Castle further highlights the influence Chen continues to have in the magic community.
The Award of Excellence is a recent category. Joan Dukore received it in 2024 and Connie Boyd in 2025.
Lifetime Achievement Award: Paul Fidler
Paul Fidler, 75, has a career in magic that now spans over 60 years. He first drew national notice as “the Magic Hawaiian” when Genii put him on its November 1973 cover and profiled his tropical-themed act.
His television work began early. He appeared on The All-American College Show in 1969 and on Venezuelan television in 1971. He later worked on Merv Griffin’s television productions, Circus of the Stars, and Sábado Gigante.
On stage, he worked resort showrooms in Hawaii and Puerto Rico in the mid-1970s. In 1976 he landed his first Las Vegas contract, in the Tropicana’s Folies Bergere, and he performed there through 1981. He went on to the MGM Grand in Las Vegas and Trump’s Castle in Atlantic City, and he has also performed at The Magic Castle.
At sea and abroad, he performed with eight major cruise lines, among them Norwegian, Holland America, Costa, Royal Cruise Line, and Princess. In 1989 he toured Japan and Asia with Foster Productions’ Spellbound. In all, he has worked under contract in 34 countries across Europe, Asia, the Caribbean, and the South Pacific.
Fire became his signature. Known as “Pyro Paul,” he has performed his original fire magic at most of the leading hotels in Las Vegas, including a run as the “Magic Fire Wizard” at Excalibur from 1998 to 2006. His fire magic has also been featured on Masters of Illusion. An inventor as well as a performer, he founded Rockstar Pyro Fire U.S.A., also known as Las Vegas Pyrotechnics, which creates special effects for live shows and music concerts.
“I started learning and performing magic just for fun, when I was only 13 years old in 1964, and now I am 75 years old and receiving this amazing award,” Fidler wrote on Facebook the night of the ceremony. He called it “an enormous blessing and honor to be acknowledged together with so many famous, respected names in our magic entertainment industry.”
Magic History Preservationist: Dr. Bruce Averbook
Bruce Averbook, 70, has been a magician for more than 55 years. Born and raised in Los Angeles, he discovered magic at 11, when an injury kept him in bed and he immersed himself in magic books, then began performing for friends and family. He grew up watching great performers at The Magic Castle. He stepped away from paid performing during medical school, returned in the 1980s as a Magic Castle magician member, and went on to a career as a surgical oncologist. Along the way he served as president of the Cleveland Magicians Club.
After retiring from medicine, Averbook opened The Averbook Magic Art Museum & Library in the Cleveland area in early 2023. The three-story, 8,000-square-foot museum holds more than 50,000 objects and ephemera, plus 15,000 rare books and periodicals. Its Houdini holdings, including handcuffs, lithographs, and Weisz family materials, are recognized worldwide for their size and significance. The collection also features Okito’s handmade apparatus and costumes, Robert-Houdin’s mystery clocks, and material tied to Herrmann, Kellar, Thurston, Chung Ling Soo, Cardini, Dante, and Dai Vernon. Visits are by appointment.
Averbook has also begun opening that archive to the public in print. In 2025 he allowed publication of Houdini’s first travel diary as Escaping Obscurity: The Travel Diary of Harry Houdini, 1897-1899. In May, Haversat’s 1878 Press published Houdini’s original challenge scrapbook from the collection as A Strenuous Career: The Personal Challenge and Advertisement Scrapbook of Harry Houdini. That book runs more than 160 large-format color pages in a 9-by-12-inch hardbound edition with a slipcase. It was printed in a run of 300, available only from 1878 Press. The timing is fitting: Christopher wrote several Houdini biographies, and the 100th anniversary of Houdini’s death falls on October 31.
Carrying the work forward
Christopher performed, wrote, edited, and collected, and his foundation’s awards have always reflected that range. This year’s class spans more than six decades of magic, from a career that began on network television in 1969 to a performer still in his twenties. Their work reaches from the close-up table and the cruise ship showroom to the Las Vegas Strip and the rare-book shelf.
Thirty-five years after Maurine Christopher set out to keep conjuring on a level with the other performing arts, the foundation is still finding people who do exactly that.
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