All this happened, more or less

Essays exploring the intersection of loss, grief, memory and the power of love and healing through the lens of a body in motion.

Jayne A. Quan writes with honesty and humour about key moments in their life and transition. With lyric insight and quiet clarity, Quan navigates the intersection of loss, grief, memory and the power of love and healing through the lens of a body in motion. Courageous and poignant, this debut collection of essays deftly explores what it takes to live your own truth and carve a place for yourself in a world that offers no blueprint.

Praise for All this happened, more or less
Jayne Quan has built a cathedral of love and grief and acceptance; of bodies and faith, of loss and desire. A book that’s alive with truth and possibility, looking inwardly to our private sorrows while engaging politically with the world. A superb, deeply moving and unforgettable work. — Sinéad Gleeson

Jayne is just a lovely writer, and these searching, beautifully cadenced essays are filled with abiding truths. — Anne Enright

This is a story of love as much as it is a story of loss — a story of how love can bloom in the aftermath of trauma, in absence of light — and how transition, itself, is an act of love. As they reiterate throughout, this is only one story of transition, but it is one worth reading. — William Keohane

Jayne A Quan’s beautifully written essays are moving and revelatory explorations of loss and identity. You’ll be the better for reading them. — Patrick Freyne

This collection defies linearity and bookends, embracing that there is no single path through love or grief or transition, and no single way to look back on them. It is monumentally intimate to share such defining moments; it is even more vulnerable to express a sense of remaining undefined after them. — James Hudson

All This Happened, More or Less is a clear, patient, impassioned look at the bodies we inhabit, the skins we shed, the burdens we carry; it is a tender cri de coeur about the possibility of transformation and the meaning of love, that asks each of us to look once more at what we may have assumed or taken for granted, at who we might be, or become. — Lucy Caldwell

---