Hayden Goodman is an African-American painter, illustrator, and character artist born and raised in the wilderness of Western Massachusetts. She holds a degree in Illustration from The School of Visual Arts and previously worked in animation. Her debut picture book, The Green Piano by Grammy Award-winner Roberta Flack and Tonya Bolden, was published in January 2023 by Anne Schwartz Books. Her forthcoming illustration projects include The Heart Never Forgets by Ana Ot (Atheneum, 2024), The Night Before Christmas (Holt, 2025), a visual reimagining of Clement Clarke Moore’s classic poem, Imagine New Suns by Gwendolyn Wallace (S&S, 2026), a picture book biography of Octavia Butler, and Fangs, Feathers, and Folklore by B. Sharise Moore, a middle grade field guide to mythological African beasts. Hayden’s editorial illustrations have been published in The New Yorker and the New York Times. She works primarily in gouache, painting the witches, goblins and other mysterious creatures from the folklore of her childhood.
