Jennifer Hayden

Jennifer Hayden is a graphic novelist whose new food memoir Where There’s Smoke, There’s Dinner: Confessions of a Cartoonist Cook is a hand-painted tribute to her love of cookbook illustration as well as her utter hatred of making dinner every night.

Hayden’s breast cancer memoir The Story of My Tits was nominated for an Eisner Award and has been translated into three languages. The French edition, Nénés Chéris, was shortlisted for Elle France Magazine’s 2022 comics grand prix. Hayden’s first collection Underwire was excerpted in The Best American Comics 2013.

After a skirmish with breast cancer, Hayden arrived on the comics stage at the age of forty-three. A writer, picture book illustrator, and acclaimed kitchen storyteller, she took to comics instantly. Her work has been exhibited in Rome, Naples, and Madrid. She has self-published three collections and appeared online at Cleaver Magazine and The Comics Journal. She has shared her work with students at Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, and NYU, and with audiences from San Diego to Toronto, London and Oslo.

Hayden lives with her husband in New Jersey, and hopes to use the proceeds from her new book to hire a personal chef.