Wired.com presents the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy. And here is your host, David Barr-Kirtley.

Hello and welcome to episode 306 of Geek's Guide to the Galaxy.

Our guest today is Mary Rickert,

author of the Short Story Collection,

You Have Never Been Here.

She's also the author of two previous Short Story Collections,

Map of Dreams and Holiday, as well as the novel The Memory

Garden.

She's worked as a kindergarten teacher, a barista, and a Disneyland balloon vendor, and her

writing has received the Crawford Award, the World Fantasy Award, and the Shirley Jackson Award.

And now here's our interview with Mary Rickert.

All right, so we're here with Mary Rickert. Welcome to the show.

Thank you very much for having me.

Okay, so it says in your bio that you used to work as a Disneyland balloon vendor, so tell us about that.

Yes, I worked in Disneyland. I was in the concession department. So each day I would go to work and they'd assign me to a different place. Sometimes I sold

popcorn and sometimes I sold ice cream

in various locations around the park.

And, but my favorite was selling the balloons, you know, walking around with the giant

bouquet of balloons.

Though they didn't let me do it too often because I was always losing balloons. They were just floating. I don't I don't understand to this day how it happened but I didn't get to do that too often but it was my favorite people were really friendly I enjoyed

being friendly to them it was a nice place to work and I liked the people

watching I would have to say that was a really good job for me for people watching as a writer.

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