Evansville Native C. L. Stambush Tours The Edge Of India; Shares Her Story In New Book
December 9, 2021
Evansville native C. L. Stambush narrates her 5-month, 7,000-mile journey in her new book Untethered: A Woman’s Search for Self on the Edge of India – A Travel Memoir
Never having ridden a motorcycle before, C. L. Stambush buys a Bullet motorcycle to travel the dangerous edge of India. Along the way she is reshaped as she encounters friendly families and ominous men, confronts culture clashes, hijras, and bandits, experiences monsoons, scorching deserts, and homicidal drivers, crashing her motorcycle and learning about herself as she loses her camera, her way, and her self-control—crossing lines she never imagined possible.
The suspenseful and honest prose of Untethered immerses readers in India’s diverse culture while vividly conveying the harrowing and triumphant journey of a woman alone, in a world where women don’t travel alone, discovering her true grit.
C.L. Stambush is a journalist, writer, and editor who has lived worked, and traveled in more than 20 countries. Her work has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Cosmopolitan, Far Eastern Economic Review, Travelers’ Tales, as well as national and international newspapers.
She is the recipient of awards, scholarships, and residencies from Hedgebrook Writers Colony, Ropewalk Writers Retreat, Split Rock Arts Program, and Indiana University Writers’ Conference, where an early chapter from this book was judged Best Creative Nonfiction by Scott Russell Sanders.
She lived in Europe, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Asia for six years, traveling by foot, train, truck, bus, boat, camel, donkey cart, and motorcycle. After returning to the United States, she was recruited to become a national motorcycle safety instructor where she trained hundreds of people (many of them women) to ride safely during her fourteen-year tenure.
 C. L. Stambush Story
She grew up in southern Indiana surrounded by lush nature and vibrant women who filled her life and imagination with stories, a legacy that she honored to carry on.
Like many of us, her journey as a writer began with reading and writing stories as a little kid hoping to convey her feelings and connect with a larger world. She wrote her first book––bound with pink yarn and filled with images colored and cut from my books––when she was four or five. It was the story of a lost chick in search of her place in the world, and it’s one she has been writing, in one form or another, her whole life.Â
While she writes professionally today, as the senior writer and editor for a university magazine, she has not always been fortunate enough to earn a living doing what she’s passionate about. Her first job was babysitter, then horse-stall cleaner, waitress, drugstore clerk, grocery cashier, housecleaner, factory worker, medical proofreader, journalist, motorcycle instructor, writing professor, and a few other things she either can’t recall or not telling.
Writing Awards
- CASE 2017 Best Alumni/Institution Magazine Honorable Mention
- CASE 2017 Excellence in Feature Writing, Series – Silver Award
- Bronze CASE Award in Excellence in Feature Writing, Series, USI Magazine Winter – 2015
- Gold CASE Award in Excellence in Feature Writing Series, USI Magazine – 2014
- Hedgebrook Writer-in-Residence Fellowship – 2004
- Best Creative Nonfiction Writing, Indiana University’s Writers’ – 2003
- Runcible Spoon’s Creative Nonfiction Scholarship – 2002, 2003
- Split Rock Arts Program Full-merit Scholarship – 2003
- Vermont’s Postgraduate Writer’s Conference Merit Scholarship – 2003
- Ropewalk Writers Retreat Scholarship – 2001, 2002
A FEW FACTS ABOUT HER LIFE
- She worked on a pharmaceutical assembly line for nine years.
- She received my master’s of creative nonfiction from Sarah Lawrence College, graduating summa cum laude.
- When she was 32, she sold her furniture, clothes, car, and bought a backpack and one-way ticket to Frankfort, Germany. She didn’t know how to change money, ride a train and didn’t have a clue as to what she was doing.
- She traveled and lived in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia for six years––living in India for four of them.
- She rode a motorcycle––outside of ABATE of Indiana’s one-week training course in Evansville, Indiana, prior to buying a Royal Enfield Bullet motorcycle and riding it solo around India.
- When she left America for Germany, she planned to be in Europe for six months to a year. She remained abroad for six years before coming home to live.
- While abroad, she traveled by foot, train, truck, bus, boat, camel, donkey cart, and motorcycle.Â
Footnote: The City-County Observer highly recommends that you read UNTETHERED: A Quest for Boldness Along the Edge of India. Â It’s a must-read.
You can purchase “UNTETHERED” in paperback for $19.99 on Amazon Kindle. Â If you would like to speak to Miss Stambush personally contact her at 1-812-306-1432. You can also contact her at connie@clstambush.com.
