Caitlin Donohue is a San Francisco Bay Area-raised, Mexico City-based bilingual culture journalist and drug educator.
Her upcoming book for teenagers Weed: Cannabis Culture in the Americas will be published September 5th via Zest/Lerner Books. In it, Caitlin interviews 17 people from across the hemisphere with extensive knowledge of cannabis, from a nursing professor to an adolescent medical marijuana patient to a formerly incarcerated drug justice advocate to a pro athlete with a legal cannabis company, and many more. It will dramatically expand the kinds of information on weed and the international Drug War available to teens—and adults.
Her first book for young adults was ‘She Represents: 43 Women Who Are Changing Politics … And The World’.
Caitlin’s weekly Spanish language radio show Crónica examines psychoactive substances in times of prohibition and airs on Radio Nopal, one of Mexico’s largest independent web stations. She started working as a union organizer as a teenager. In her twenties, she began her journalism career as an intern at the San Francisco Bay Guardian alternative weekly newspaper, where she eventually became culture editor. It was there that Caitlin started writing about weed for her column “Herbwise”—kicking off a journey that, years later, would bring her to become a two-time judge for the Mexican Cannabis Cup. She now teaches workshops on responsible drug use in parties, festivals, and nightlife venues throughout Mexico City.
She has contributed to publications including High Times, Remezcla, Rookie, Advocate, Marie Claire, FACT, and the McSweeney’s anthology Indelible in the Hippocampus: Writings from the Me Too Movement. Caitlin believes that culture journalism has the power to reframe reality.
She has lived on four continents, and has made a home in Mexico City with her cat, Kiara, since 2014.
DNC 2024
I’ve lived in Mexico for 10 years, but every once in a while, I like to check on how the homeland is doing. This summer, I did that in the most stressful way possible: filing articles for five consecutive days on the peripheries of a Democratic National Convention in Chicago taking place amid genocide. For Bay Area site 48 Hills, I wrote about how the run-up to the protests was so very different to that of 1968, Monday’s security perimeter breach, an insider’s view from uncommitted delegate (and star socialist podcast host) Daniel Denvir, a woman who wants to facilitate your correspondence with the next president, and the wildly diverse coalition that came to demand Palestinian freedom.
drug ed 4 all
drug ed 4 all
Young people need to know way more about cannabis than “just say no.” In ‘Weed,’ teens hear from people who have gone to jail for cannabis, make their living off it, need it as medicine, and who have vital information on the many ways the drug impacts today’s communities.
Kirkus Reviews says, “Donohue does not skirt the real risks of cannabis, urging readers to wait until they are out of their teens to use it given the unknown risks to developing brains while emphasizing education and responsible use … Solid research and a global perspective create a useful approach focusing on harm reduction.”
Out September 5th via Zest/Lerner Books.
CRÓNICA
Conversations about drug culture and politics in Mexico City and beyond. Since 2020, host and producer Caitlin Donohue has aired her weekly Spanish language interview show live on Radio Nopal, Mexico’s largest web station. Follow the show on Instagram.
Caitlin’s letter to her younger self regarding survival and college rape culture was published by McSweeney’s in its 2019 anthology ‘Indelible in the Hippocampus: Writings From The Me Too Movement’.
Buzzfeed Books published her essay as an excerpt, in case you’d like to read it.
reach out
caitlinbyrddonohue@gmail.com