Kate Charlesworth

Kate Charlesworth (born 1950) is a British cartoonist and artist who has produced comics and illustrations since the 1970s. Her work has appeared in LGBT publications such as The Pink Paper, Gay News, Strip AIDS, Dyke's Delight, and AARGH, as well as The Guardian, The Independent and New Internationalist. Lesbian and Gay Studies: A Critical Introduction (Bloomsbury Publishing) calls her a "notable by-and-for lesbian" cartoonist.

In 2015, her graphic novel Sally Heathcote: Suffragette (with Mary and Bryan Talbot) was included in a list published by The Guardian of the "top 10 books about revolutionaries". Sensible Footwear: A Girl's Guide, her autobiography and history of gay and lesbian culture in England and Scotland from the end of World War II to the present, was published in 2018.

Early life Charlesworth was born in Barnsley, Yorkshire, England, in 1950 to Joan and Harold Charlesworth. Her parents ran a local corner shop during her childhood. She attended Wombwell High School in Barnsley and attended Manchester College of Art and Design to study graphics and stage design from 1968 to 1973.

Charlesworth is an only child. The strip ran for six months. In 1976, she moved to London, after which she was published in gay and lesbian newspapers including The Pink Paper, Gay News, and Sappho, LGBT comic books including Strip AIDS, Dyke's Delight, and AARGH, and mainstream publications like The Guardian and City Limits.

She has produced science comics for New Scientist ("Life, the Universe and (Almost) Everything") and The Independent, as well as illustrations for several books published by the National Museums of Scotland.

She describes her art style as not overly cartoonish or caricature, but emotionally realistic. In an interview she stated that she uses photographic reference and tries to get in the mind of each character to accurately portray their emotions on the page.

More recently, Charlesworth has shifted to working on graphic novels. She illustrated Sally Heathcote: Suffragette by Mary Talbot, published in 2014. Her illustrations were highly praised by Neel Mukherjee in The Guardian as "beautifully executed in black-and-white, with perfectly judged touches of colour". In 2011, she contributed to Blank Slate’s Nelson, a collaborative graphic novel with 54 British comic artists. Nelson was chosen as The Guardians graphic novel of the month by Rachel Cooke and one of 2011's best graphic novels by The Times. Charlesworth spent four years working on her autobiographical work Sensible Footwear: A Girl's Guide, which was published in 2019. She has created several cards for Cath Tate Cards, run by fellow cartoonist and friend Cath Tate. She created the CD cover for Fast Talk by Kay Grant and Alex Ward. She also produces various forms of 3-D art, including birthday cards, maps, board games, and shadow boxes, featured on her website.

Her future plans include a joint comic project with her partner, Dianne, as well as moving into different mediums, including animation.

She has also been involved in many efforts to increase awareness of LGBT history. In the same year she participated in the City of Edinburgh Council's "Rainbow City" exhibition at the City Art Centre. She also participates in Edinburgh's Loud and Proud choir, which sang at Equal Marriage lobbies of the Scottish Parliament. Charlesworth and David Shenton had an exhibition of 50 queer-themed cartoons called "Sh(OUT): Contemporary art and Human Rights," developed with OurStory Scotland, at the Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art in 2009. In 2015, Sally Heathcote: Suffragette was included in a list published by The Guardian of the "top 10 books about revolutionaries". Her work was acquired by Glasgow Museum for their fine arts collection in 2019. Charlesworth held a pop-up display at the Cartoon Museum to coincide with the release of her new book in 2019. Sensible Footwear: A Girl's Guide appeared on the 2019 Portico Prize longlist.