Where Theres Smoke, Theres Dinner

Confessions of a Cartoonist Cook

Jennifer Hayden

$39.99

Paperback

Forthcoming
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English

Top Shelf Productions
11 November 2025

Graphic novels

Bursting with color, flavor, and messy emotions, this unprecedented graphic memoir and ""anti-cookbook"" blends comics with satirical recipes to explore the intersections of food, feminism, frustration, and family.

Bursting with color, flavor, and messy emotions, this unprecedented graphic memoir and ""anti-cookbook"" blends comics with satirical recipes to explore the intersections of food, feminism, frustration, and family.

Jennifer Hayden has never liked to cook. She's not particularly good at it, either. But, like so many of us...she does it anyway.

Why is that? Where did these expectations come from? What happens if you don't live up to the ideal of the perfect wife/mother/chef? And would someone please open a window before the fire department comes?

Where There's Smoke, There's Dinner- Confessions of a Cartoonist Cook is an accidental memoir from a woman whose comics earn rave reviews around the world but whose meals earn shrugs around the dinner table.

Marinating in an unconventional and aromatic blend of formats, Hayden traces the nuances of her complicated relationship to food. Anecdotal comics alternate with wryly ironic ""recipes,"" peppered with oven fires, explosions, prayers, and incantations. Along the way, all the salty judgments and bitter frustrations just might caramelize into some real wisdom and self-acceptance. In any case, it's all hand-painted in mouth-watering color as a tribute to Hayden's love of cookbooks...or at least the illustrations inside them.

By: Jennifer Hayden
Imprint: Top Shelf Productions
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 256mm, Width: 168mm,
Weight: 369g
ISBN: 9781603095679
ISBN 10: 1603095675
Pages: 208
Publication Date: 11 November 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Jennifer Hayden is the author and artist of the Eisner-nominated breast cancer memoir The Story of My Tits, which has been translated into Italian, Spanish, and French. The French edition, Nenes Cheris, was short-listed for Elle France's 2022 comics grand prize. Hayden's first collection, Underwire, was published in The Best American Comics 2013. She draws and cooks dinner in the woods of New Jersey and plans to use the proceeds of this book to hire a personal chef.

Reviews for Where Theres Smoke, Theres Dinner: Confessions of a Cartoonist Cook

“Charismatic, disarming, and delightfully candid. This book is a beautiful love letter to every ruined dinner and every imperfect cook!” — Sarah Becan (Let’s Make Ramen!) “For those of us who understand The Joy of NOT Cooking, this graphic ‘cookbook’ is hysterical all the way through.” — Caron Wendell, owner of Lucy’s Kitchen & Market and founder of restaurant One53