Writer Elise McDonough of High Times - Biography

A graduate of the School of Visual Arts in New York City, Elise McDonough is a writer and graphic artist with a passion for gardening and cooking, and for the last for 14 years, she has written for High Times—the definitive resource for all things cannabis since 1974. She writes a monthly recipe column, does product tastings, and is now their production director. Recently, McDonough has served as the art director for the quarterly publication, Medical Marijuana.

As part of her professional development, McDonough has sampled many cannabis-infused delights, from space cakes at Amsterdam’s infamous coffeehouses to award-winning medical edibles in California and Colorado. 

She is the author of Sustainable Food: How to Buy Right and Spend Less and the High Times Cannabis Cookbook (2014). In Vogue magazine, Jeffrey Steingarten wrote “The High Times cookbook is in a category of it’s own—intelligent, savvy, and knowledgeable about food, with excellent general information about cannabis and cooking with it.” McDonough’s most recent book, Marijuana for Everybody: The Definitive Guide to Getting High and Feeling Good, is an authoritative, accessible guide to marijuana, its culture, and uses. McDonough also is an activist in the local food movement, an advocate for drug law reform, and a proponent of environmental responsibility.

Based in California with husband David Bienenstock, the two were crowned the “Cannabis Couple” by the alt-weekly Good Times.