Four Days, Zero Sleep, and Worth It!

Issue 3 | April 22, 2026

There’s a particular flavor of exhaustion that only comes from running a magic conference. It’s not the ordinary kind, where you feel tired and go to sleep. It’s the kind where you sit in a very nice hotel lobby at 11 pm on a Sunday, surrounded by the wreckage of name badges and leftover programs, and you feel something that is approximately 40% relief, 30% pride, 20% a burning need to never speak to another human being for at least a week, and 10% already thinking about next year.

The Poe’s Magic Conference 2026 is done. It happened. April 16th through 19th, right here at the Lord Baltimore Hotel, and every session ran, every performer showed up, and nobody accidentally started a small fire. At this point in a conference, that last one counts.

What follows is a loose accounting of what went on, for those who were there and want to relive it, and for those who weren’t and are going to feel appropriately envious.

The Part Where Everyone Arrived

Thursday evening started, as most good things do, with a little chaos and a lot of people in the lobby who weren’t quite sure where to go. Registration opened, lanyards were distributed, and within about forty-five minutes the Lord Baltimore’s corridors had that specific energy that only happens when you put a few dozen magicians in one building.

Hushed conversations about methods. Somebody doing card work on a side table in the bar. At least three separate people producing coins from apparently nowhere and then pretending they hadn’t.

The opening night mixer did what opening night mixers are supposed to do. People who’d only known each other from forums met in person. Old friends picked up mid-sentence from wherever they’d left off, usually years ago. The kind of community that magic at its best actually builds, which is something we don’t always stop to appreciate, but we really should.

The Sessions

Friday and Saturday were dense with programming. Lectures, workshops, panels on everything from the technical side of stage illusion to the surprisingly thorny question of how magicians should navigate social media without making their entire mystique collapse into a pile of retweets.

The workshop sessions were wonderful and informative. Shoulder-to-shoulder magicians watching other magicians do things with ordinary objects that should not be physically possible, and absolutely refusing to blink in case they missed the how. This is the atmosphere that makes conferences worth attending at all, the compressed, almost pressurized attention of people who genuinely care about the craft.

The storytelling track deserves a separate mention, partly because it was genuinely excellent and partly because it’s always the track where the audience walks out looking slightly unsettled (the panel discussion was heated over cards!), like they’ve just had a conversation they can’t quite explain. Good. That’s correct. That’s the point. Also: the Andruzzi Awards. They happened. The right people won. More on that when the official announcements go out.

The Gala

Saturday night’s Gala show was, and I say this not as the person who organized it but as someone sitting in the back watching it happen, genuinely spectacular. Multiple performers. A packed house. The kind of evening where the audience, who knew they were watching professional magicians, kept forgetting and reacting like civilians anyway.

There is something slightly absurd and completely wonderful about a room full of people who know how tricks work being fooled anyway. That’s the best advertisement for the craft that exists. When you fool the people who are looking for it, you’ve done something real.

Sunday was quieter. Closing sessions, goodbyes, the slow dispersal of a few dozen people back into a world that has no idea this happened. Which is mostly fine. Some things are better when they’re a little secret.

Thank You, Actually

Conferences don’t happen because of one person, a fact that organizers tend to forget until they’re standing in that lobby at 11pm on Sunday and realize that somewhere between fifteen and forty things went right today that they had nothing to do with.

Thank you to every performer who brought their A-game (and their props, and their willingness to talk shop at all hours). Thank you to the staff at the Lord Baltimore Hotel, who absorbed a building full of magicians with something approaching grace. Thank you to everyone who attended, who asked good questions, who wandered into sessions they weren’t sure about and got genuinely surprised.

And thank you, honestly, to everyone who has supported Poe’s Magic Theatre and Poe’s Magic Club over the past year. Events like this conference exist because the community around this theatre is genuinely good, and that’s not something we take for granted.

This Weekend at Poe’s Magic Theatre

The conference wrapped Sunday. We’re back on stage Friday. The show does not stop.

Friday, April 24: A Dose of Deception featuring Dr. Brian Nguyen. Dr. Nguyen brings a show that lives at the intersection of sharp mentalism and sharper wit. Worth your Friday evening, especially if you’ve been looking for an excuse to get back downtown.

Saturday, April 25: Worlds Beyond Imagination Featuring TEO. TEO brings a show that earns its title. Multiple dates available if this one sells out, which it tends to.

Sunday, April 26: Drag Brunch LIVE! at the Lord Baltimore Hotel. Because Sundays should be ridiculous and spectacular in roughly equal measure, and this delivers both. Tickets and info at poesmagic.com.

At the Lord Baltimore Hotel

The hotel has things going on beyond Poe’s, as it tends to.

Good Taste Art Exhibition: Baltimore-born visual artist Mark Anthony West Jr.’s show, “Seven Stars Between Two Skies,” is on at LB Bistro & Bakery through June 2026. The work originated in Rio de Janeiro and portraits American and Brazilian creatives rendered as sovereign forces in their own universes. Striking work. Worth a look if you’re in the building.

LB Skybar Opens April 30: The hotel’s 19th-floor rooftop lounge is back for the season starting Thursday, April 30th at 7pm. Thursdays through Saturdays, 5-11pm, cocktails and views of the Baltimore skyline. The crab rolls are good. The height is vertiginous. Both of these things are features, not bugs. More at lordbaltimorehotel.com.

Downtown Baltimore This Weekend

Baltimore Tattoo Convention (April 24-26): The annual convention takes over the Baltimore Convention Center at 1 W. Pratt St. World-class artists, collectors, exhibitions, and performances. Friday 2-11pm, Saturday 11am-11pm, Sunday 11am-8pm. $25-50 admission.

The Tempest, Chesapeake Shakespeare Company: Shakespeare’s play about an exiled magician on an island, weighing his powers between forgiveness and revenge, runs through May 17 at 7 S. Calvert St. It’s the week after a magic conference, so the timing feels deliberate. Probably isn’t. Still. Tickets $25-69.

Stavros Halkias: The Dreamboat Tour (Friday, April 24): The comedian brings his tour to The Lyric, 140 W. Mt. Royal Ave., 7pm. If you’ve seen his specials, you know. If you haven’t, this is a fine place to start.

Mahler’s 8th Symphony (Sunday, April 26): More than 150 voices performing the “Symphony of a Thousand” at Grace United Methodist Church, 5407 N. Charles St., 3pm. The Baltimore Choral Arts Society, Deer Creek Children’s Chorus, and soloists from Peabody Opera. $26-52.

From the Baltimore Magic History File

Harry Kellar gave his final performance as a working magician on May 16, 1908, right here in Baltimore, at Ford’s Theatre. He had held the title of America’s Greatest Magician for years, and on that night he formally handed the mantle to Howard Thurston in front of a packed house. Kellar walked off the stage for the last time to a standing ovation. Thurston, by all accounts, looked like a man who had just been handed something very heavy.

It’s worth noting that this was a planned, ceremonial handoff, which is not how most legacies work in magic or anywhere else. Usually they’re disputed, accidental, or complicated. Kellar and Thurston apparently had the good sense to make it a proper moment. Baltimore was the right place for it. The city has been hosting those kinds of moments, in magic and otherwise, for a long time.

At CFG Bank Arena

Pawject Runway (Friday, April 24, 6-10pm): BARCS Animal Shelter’s high-energy fundraiser and adoption event fills CFG Bank Arena with pro athletes, media personalities, musicians, and, more importantly, adoptable dogs and cats. The animals walk the runway. The humans are there to facilitate. If you leave without a new pet, that is an act of genuine willpower. Tickets via Eventbrite.

Coming Up: We Them Ones Comedy Tour with Mike Epps, Karlous Miller, DC Young Fly, and Chico Bean hits CFG on May 1st. Tickets at cfgbankarena.com.

The Games

Baltimore Orioles vs. Boston Red Sox: The Birds host the Red Sox all weekend at Camden Yards, April 24-26. The O’s come in sitting at 10-12, which is fine, it’s April, nobody panic. Three games to right the ship (or not). Tickets at mlb.com/orioles.

Maryland Terrapins Men’s Lacrosse: The Terps earned the No. 3 seed in the Big Ten Tournament and host No. 6 Rutgers on Saturday, April 25 at 6pm at SECU Stadium in College Park. Maryland finished as one of four co-champions of the regular season, which is either impressive or a sign that the Big Ten is extremely chaotic this year. Probably both.