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Cloistered: Reflecting on God’s Call Both Within and Beyond the Monastic Choir
Join us at the Abbey for an inspiring and intimate conversation with Catherine Coldstream.
Catherine is a writer, mentor, editor, and occasional musician. Author of Cloistered: my Years as a Nun, her work has been published in the UK (Chatto & Windus, 2024,), the US (St Martin’s Press, 2024), and the Czech Republic (Práh, 2024), adapted for radio (as BBC Radio 4’s Book of the Week, April 2024) and serialised in the Observer and the Saturday Telegraph.
She has appeared as a guest on Radio 4’s Free Thinking, the Sunday morning programme, and Saturday Live, as well as on Radio 3’s The Verb, and has been interviewed on BBC Scotland, BBC Wales, and Write About Now. She has written and presented for Radio 3 (The Essay, 9th and 10th October 2025) , spoken at St John’s College Cambridge, delivered lectures including for the Temenos Academy, and appeared in conversation at many literary festivals including Wigtown, Bath, Bridport, Norwich, the Boswell Book Festival, the Festival of Faith and Literature, and at the Chalke History Festival in discussion with Mark Vernon and Martin Shaw.
Shortlisted for the TLS Ackerley Prize 2025, the Hatchard’s and Biographers’ Club First Biography Prize, 2024, and chosen as one of Prospect Magazine’s Books of the Year, Cloistered is the product of a long, slow process of mulling, soul-searching, and attention to the craft of writing.