Jamy Ian Swiss

American magician (born 1952)

Jamy Ian Swiss (born November 30, 1952, in Brooklyn, New York) is an American magician, author, speaker, historian of magic, essayist, book reviewer, and scientific skeptic. He is known for sleight of hand with playing cards.

Swiss is a sleight of hand performer who specializes in close up card magic, stage magic, and mentalism. He first got into magic at age 7. He has spoken and performed across the United States, including for companies such as Adobe, and Evernote and for the Smithsonian Institution, as well as at The Magic Castle. He has spoken at The New Yorker Festival. He is a frequent guest speaker at the EG creativity and innovation conference. His show of intimate sleight of hand magic, Magic: Close up in Concert, ran for six months at the Rainbow Room in New York City. It was remounted in San Diego in 2017. Swiss is a co founder and currently a co producer and performer for Monday Night Magic, New York City's longest running Off Broadway show. In 2000, Swiss presented a one man show The Honest Liar as part of the New York International Fringe Festival. It was produced by Premiere Productions.

He has lectured to magicians in 13 countries. He also created and produces Card Clinic, an "intensive seminar on sleight of hand magic with playing cards." He is regarded as a mentor, instructor, and consultant to magicians and has been called the "must read, must fear Michiko Kakutani of magic publishing".

A longtime scientific skeptic, Jamy Ian Swiss has spoken widely to skeptic groups and conferences around the United States. He has been featured in on stage events about skepticism and magic with Penn and Teller, Ray Hyman, and others. Swiss is a co founder of the New York City Skeptics and the National Capital Area Skeptics and as a skeptic of the paranormal, he has been a longtime critic of "unethical mentalists" and "psychic con artists" who use "supernatural deceit" for personal gain. He was a Senior Fellow of the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) where he also served as a member of the Million Dollar Challenge committee (by which the foundation offered a million dollar prize for anyone able to duplicate a paranormal feat under mutually agreed upon test conditions). He is an expert on psychic charlatans, and on the intersection of science, magic, and skepticism.