Laerte

Laerte Coutinho (born 10 June 1951), known mainly as simply Laerte, is a Brazilian cartoonist, illustrator, and screenwriter, known for creating comic strips such as Piratas do Tietê (Pirates of the Tietê River).

She was part of the Brazilian underground comics scene of the 1980s. Together with Angeli and Glauco (and later Adão Iturrusgarai) she drew the collaborative comic strip . She has done work for publications such as Balão, O Pasquim, and Chiclete com Banana magazines, and draws regularly for Folha de S. Paulo newspaper. Since the mid 2000s, her strips have become more "philosophical" and less humor-focused, relying less on recurring characters.

She is a transgender woman. She did media coverage for FIFA World Cups: those of 1978 (for the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo), 1982 (for Folha de S. Paulo), and 1986 (for O Estado de S. Paulo).

At the end of the 1980s, she published comic strips for magazines such as Chiclete com Banana (edited by Angeli), Geraldão (edited by Glauco) and Circo, all by Toninho Mendes' Circo publishing house, who would later launch her solo magazine Piratas do Tietê. In 1985 she released her first book, O Tamanho da Coisa, a collection of her cartoons. In 1991 Folha de S. Paulo began publishing her Piratas do Tietê comic strips. She regularly releases albums with collections of her strips, mainly published by Devir Livraria and L&PM Pocket.

Laerte has also worked as screenwriter, co-authoring scripts for comedy shows such as TV Pirata and Sai de Baixo and children's show TV Colosso. She presents a talk-show on Canal Brasil, Transando com Laerte.

Personal life Assigned male at birth, she came out in 2009 as a crossdresser and later as a transgender woman. In 2012 she was a founding member of the Associação Brasileira de Transgêner@s ("Brazilian Association of Transgender People"). She contributed to the Google Doodle for International Women's Day 2018 by creating a short comic about a man and a transgender woman falling in love.

Her son Rafael Coutinho is also a cartoonist.