Allegra Goodman is an American writer based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She was born in Brooklyn in 1967 and grew up in Honolulu, where she did not have to wear shoes in school until fifth grade. Goodman wrote and illustrated her first novel at the age of seven.

She is known for her most recent novel, The Chalk Artist, published in 2017. Her novel Sam is about a young girl's exuberance, wonder, and ambition as she comes of age. Jenna Bush Hager picked "Sam" for her Today Show book club, praising it as "about as perfect of a coming-of-age story as I have ever read."

Goodman is looking forward to the release of her new novel "Isola," expected in February 2025. The novel is based on the true story of a young woman who sails from France to the New World in 1542 and is marooned on an island in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence.