“This Time and the Next” by Noel Quiñones is the winner of the 2025 Jesmyn Ward Prize in Fiction selected by judge Ghassan Abou-Zeineddine. It is published in the print Summer 2025 issue of MQR.
In Noel Quiñones’s epistolary work, “This Time and the Next,” language is restricted and surveilled. A series of letters written from a father to his young daughter, Rosie, reveals that Papi is incarcerated. At first, Rosie believes what her father writes to her—that he was put away for someone else’s crime—but over time, she begins to see how her father’s choices have negatively affected her mother, and how other family members enable his behavior. As Papi’s possibility of release from prison dims, he grows more anxious to continue his relationship with his daughter. “Rosie, I hope when you receive this letter that your doing good […] Rosie, I hope when you receive this letter you are thinking of me. I am always thinking of you […] Rosie, I hope you are in good health and care.” Meanwhile the strain placed on Rosie as an intermediary between her father and the rest of the family comes to overwhelm her. An ongoing refrain from father to daughter invites readers to witness the erosion of trust between generations vying for attention and recognition in one another.
“This Time and the Next” is a masterclass in elliptical storytelling. Hand-drawn pictures and birthday cards never make it to their intended recipient, phone calls and visits are referenced but never witnessed, and sides are chosen off the page. Readers must trade clear knowledge of the situation for nuanced moments rich with literary payoff, such as the sudden shift in tone between Rosie and Papi when it is revealed that he will move to Florida with his new wife at his release. Rosie’s use of the formal salutation “Dear Francisco” poignantly suggests her pain.
Echoing in my mind from my first read is the singular question: what do we owe our family members? The potential for reconciliation between father and daughter is hinted at, but never assumed, and readers are invited to consider the cost of such a challenging relationship for a maturing child. “You didnt say when your coming home,” Rosie writes. “Everyone keeps asking Mami to be accurate but she says love and accurate are different.” In “This Time and Next,” emotional subtext is alive and well. Quiñones artfully deconstructs our need for reassurance and instead directs us to the alternative: those subtleties left unsaid.
-Jennifer Nessel, Assistant Editor
Spanning several years, “This Time and the Next” is a moving and beautifully crafted epistolary story about a father-daughter relationship. Through a series of raw and emotionally complex letters exchanged between the father, an inmate at a correctional facility, and the daughter, who lives with her mother, grandmother, and uncle in the Bronx, readers learn about the dynamics of a family torn apart by a violent crime. There’s so much to admire about this story, from the way the author captures the voices of the characters with unflinching honesty, the deft reveal and withholding of information, the passage of time, to thematic explorations of family loyalty and the possibility of forgiveness.
-Ghassan Abou-Zeineddine, author of Dearborn
