A Mutual Love of Literature Set Them on a Winding Path to Marriage - The New York Times

A shared profession and years of writing conferences led Libby Flores and Paul Morris on a circuitous journey to each other’s hearts.

Elizabeth Virginia Flores left her first in-person encounter with Paul William Morris in 2014 feeling a bit put off.

They were at the Association of Writers & Writing Programs conference in Seattle, and Ms. Flores, who goes by Libby, had just given an award to the editor and publisher Morgan Entrekin. The two were talking when Mr. Morris interrupted their conversation.

“I had a sense of maybe some arrogance,” Ms. Flores, 46, said. “A little Mr. Darcy situation.”

Each was working for PEN America, an organization that focuses on literature and human rights. Ms. Flores was a program manager in Los Angeles, and Mr. Morris a director in New York.

Though they have since merged, the company’s East and West Coast offices at the time were separate entities and had a history of friendly competition. There was some “ribbing,” as Ms. Flores put it, between the literary worlds of each city — and between her and Mr. Morris.

“I was like, why am I getting all of this grief?” Mr. Morris, 50, said.

A year later, at the same conference but in Minneapolis, they gravitated toward one another. This time, there was more late-night revelry and a little more ribbing, but it was “less hostile,” Mr. Morris said. Ms. Flores was in a relationship, so she playfully egged on Mr. Morris to pursue some of the women at the event.

By the end of it, a friendship had been born.

In 2016, Ms. Flores visited New York. Mr. Morris, by then also in a relationship, invited her to a fundraiser and, afterward, gave her a tour of Lower Manhattan.

He showed her Wall Street and the seaport and they walked across the Brooklyn Bridge to Dumbo. At one point, it started to rain and they ducked into a bar for beers and a round of pool. Later, they rode the merry-go-round at Jane’s Carousel, all the while exchanging their thoughts on engagements, having children and some of life’s more serious matters.

[Click here to binge read this week’s featured couples.]

Aslan Chalom

Though both were seeing other people, Ms. Flores had started to develop a crush — on New York.

After that evening together, the two fell out of touch. The following year, in November 2017, they reconnected at yet another literary event in Portland, Ore. Mr. Morris asked Ms. Flores if she changed her hair. She replied saying that she had quit her job at PEN, had broken up with her boyfriend and was moving to New York. (Her hair was merely curled.)

Before the end of 2017, she had relocated. Three days after her arrival, Ms. Flores was spending New Year’s Eve with Mr. Morris, whose relationship had ended. They toasted to the start of 2018 with champagne at a now-closed bar in Brooklyn and started dating soon after. By March 2018, the two had become exclusive.

About a year later, in April 2019, Ms. Flores moved in with Mr. Morris. He now works as the executive director of the House of SpeakEasy, a literary foundation in New York. Ms. Flories is a freelance writer and the associate publisher of BOMB Magazine.

In lieu of a proposal, the two discussed an engagement weeks later at Bacchus, a bistro and wine bar in Brooklyn. They were seated in its garden, and Mr. Morris looked at the large tree they were under and suggested that they could marry beneath it. Ms. Flores agreed.

They were married on May 14 in that same garden in front of 70 guests. The couple’s friend, the writer Brendan Kiely, led the ceremony and Maksim Kondratenko, a minister with American Marriage Ministries, officiated. Later, an additional 70 guests joined the newlyweds and those at their ceremony for a reception the Ace Hotel in Brooklyn. All attendees were asked to be vaccinated and to take a rapid test the day of the event.

A six-person brass band accompanied the crowd from the ceremony to the reception in a second-line-style slow-pace march. Both events were peppered with literary touches, which included poetry readings, table numbers printed on library cards with an Emily Dickinson quote (“Life would be all spring”) and a card catalog box where guests could deposit written well wishes for the couple.

Sometime over the winding course of their relationship, the bride said she realized her first impression of the groom as arrogant was a misconception. “When I met a lot of his friends, they were like, ‘Boy did you have that wrong,’” Ms. Flores recalled.

“And of course, clearly, I did,” she added.

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