chantale van tassel

March 21, 2025

Chantale Van Tassel is a junior studying English with concentrations in Linguistics and Writing, and is also majoring in Asian Studies. Her prose and poetry have been featured in several issues of Dialogue, most recently If the verdict of Solomon in v. 57.1, and 80's Girl, It rained on the fifteenth of june, twenty-nineteen, Rice Dumplings, and Kintsugi in v. 56.2. Dialogue staff member Mar Schuurmann sat down with Chantale to discuss her creative process and sources of inspiration.

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Mar: When did writing become an interest to you? Like, is that something you've always done, or is it something that kind of developed over time?

Chantale: I mean, probably a bit of both, right? I think even when I was small, my parents were very big readers, so they would read to me. So I was kind of fed on books and bedtime stories from a very young age, and it wasn't long after that before I was, you know, sitting myself at the little home computer, typing out my little random stories. So that was something that was happening basically throughout childhood and up through elementary school. But then, you know, as you grow older, your reading level increases, and you can read more complicated books. You get exposed to different types of literature. So there was that process of definitely loving it from day one, but growing into the love more as you go along.

M: You've submitted poetry and prose to Dialogue. Are those, like, your primary types of writing? Or do you do novel writing, or anything else?

C: I mean, I totally write fanfiction. I'm just gonna say that.

M: Really? Me too!

C: Yeah! I mean, that's probably the closest to novel writing that I'm at right now. I don't have time for it right now, but it is really fun. And I think that's how I keep myself motivated sometimes, because it's my own sort of fun, fluffy thing and not too depressing or heavy. I didn't start writing fanfiction until my last year of high school and my gap year, because it was like, “Oh, I'm not in school. I should just write something fun.” So that's when I started and really got into the rabbit hole of that. I don’t have a lot of fanfiction—I only have two, and neither of them are finished right now. It's been very slow over the years, just, like, kind of chapter by chapter. But I can see how my writing has improved by reading back through it. The community's always really sweet, too. They say very nice things. It's very supportive.

M: That’s so cool. That support is huge.

C: Yeah. It’s fun. But I think, yeah, definitely prose in general—whether that's, like, long fiction stuff or stuff I've submitted—comes more naturally to me. I think poetry is more of something I'm just dabbling in. But I enjoy both. In middle school you kind of go through that phase of the kind of cringe Pinterest poetry, so that was probably my first exposure to it. But then I actually took some classes, and I bought a couple of poetry books. So I think it was something I enjoyed on the side, but not my main thing.

M: In our last issue you did If the Verdict of Solomon (vol. 57.1, p. 4), which I loved, because you can read it both down and across, right? Did you have the form in mind first?

C: Form was the first thing I was trying to figure out. Because I knew I wanted to do a poem that reflected being bilingual, so I was like, okay, I need some physical way to basically separate out the different languages. I read a gorgeous, gorgeous poem that had a similar format to this—it’s called Waiting for Snow by the poet Tianyi—and seeing that was like, oh yeah, this form exists! I had done half-and-half stuff before, so it wasn't like I was copying it, but I was really inspired by reading it. So that form was the first thing, and once I knew what I wanted to do with that, the rest was able to fall in more easily. At first, I wanted to try being really intentional about separating out the languages. I wanted to try writing one half using words I know how to say in Chinese, but then that turned out to be too complicated because then I realized, wow, my Chinese really is going, and I can’t do that. But I was able to choose more simple words throughout the poem, because that is kind of the extent of my Chinese vocabulary. So I think it did work to some extent, but yeah, that's kind of what happened with it.

M: Which kind of goes with the theme of the poem. Because it’s talking about Solomon dividing the baby.

C: Yes—that title combined with losing a language. I did show this to my parents, so they know this exists. And I think my dad was able to kind of hit it right on the head. He was like, 'You talk about how you're losing your mom's side of your heritage. Do you feel that mom has had to make certain sacrifices in giving up her culture to raise her kids?' And I was like, I can't cry in front of my dad! So it was very much like, the mother in the story being willing to sacrifice her child so it wouldn't get cleaved in half is kind of similar to what my mother did. But the consequence is that I no longer have her full language.

M: That’s crazy. In a good way! But it’s also… whoa. Deep.

C: That's why I write fan fiction, or else I'm just gonna be crying all the time.

M: Do you have a favorite piece? In 56.2 you had a ton of pieces. Is there a favorite of those?

C: That's a hard one. I don't think I have a favorite. So many of the pieces, I realized, are based off of my mom. So all of them are meaningful in different ways. The only political poem I've ever written in my life, It rained on the fifteenth of june, twenty-nineteen (vol. 56.2, p. 45) was probably the fastest thing I've ever written. So that one's maybe more special than the other ones. It was very rage. I wrote it two Christmases ago—I was literally sitting on my couch at home, and I think I wrote it in one sitting, because I got so mad. I think I saw something on the news. And then last Christmas, I actually got a tattoo of the Hong Kong flag flower.

M: That's sick. And the spacing, too—was that intentional?

C: Yeah, it’s kind of like a sonnet. It's not sonnet form, but there is the volta of the transition. I tried to keep it as factually true as possible, too. I probably did take some creative liberties, like, I don't think he was actually standing on construction scaffolding, but I wasn't there. But the newspapers definitely called it a misadventure, which made me so pissed. Even during the protests, too, the government would downplay a lot of what was going on. They would say things like “Oh, hundreds of thousands marched the streets and demonstrated that day” but people who were actually there say it was closer to a million people. I feel like censorship’s the wrong word but like… I mean, it is. So there's that.

M: That’s so crazy.

C: Can I talk about a new piece I'm working on that I haven’t submitted yet?

M: Yeah, of course!

C: I decided to switch gears a little bit and talk about my dad. So my whole family's getting outed in Dialogue. It kind of touches on things I've touched on before, where there was thematically an association with sort of the political turmoil and generational trauma in the Asian side of my life. But then my dad's American, so home life was already very culturally mixed. It was sort of like anger, fire, pain on one side. And then my dad, who’s a morning person, would take walks by the river in the cool of the morning. So there's that sort of visual sensory difference. So this mini essay piece that I'm working on is about that and growing up with him as well, and him being a great influence in my life, too. I mean, all of my pieces are emotional, but every time I read the draft for this one, I cry.

M: That's the sign of a good draft.

C: Hopefully, yeah! I gave it to a reading buddy, too, and she cried. So hopefully, that's a good sign that it's going somewhere. I feel like it's interesting, too—Dialogue tends to do more of the sad and emotional, which is good, but sometimes I want to give some joy, too. I do try to be very intentional about rolling both into something. A big literary aesthetic of Chinese literature is specifically finding beauty and joy in pain and suffering. That cannot exist without the bad stuff, or else it's not meaningful. So I think that's been very incorporated into how I write. And it is totally using contrast as a literary device, but the sadness doesn't hit as hard without the moments of peace or joy.

M: Do you have post-college plans or thoughts? Do you want to go into writing?

C: Honestly, TBD on post-college. I got connected with Jane Zwart, who’s awesome. She connected me with a literary journal that she has close ties with. So I'm working on a couple reviews for them. So I have that going on, and, you know, it's kind of like once you get your foot in the door, hopefully more opportunities come up. That's definitely a side thing I'll keep doing. I'm probably not going to make any money off of it, but whatever. Who cares? That's not why I'm doing it. I'll find a way to feed myself.

M: Marry rich?

C: Potentially. So y'all econ majors out there, you guys should date people in the arts. Please. They will change your life for the better, and you will financially support them.

M: And then your children will become English majors.

C: Your children will be left-brain and right-brain talented, and will still choose the starving artist.

M: Yes! As they should. Well, thank you for coming!

C: Thank you! Thanks for having me.