Executive Director, Development
Scalawag
Da’Shaun Harrison is a trans theorist and Southern-born and bred abolitionist based in Atlanta, GA. They are the author of Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness, which won the 2022 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Nonfiction and received several other media and literary honors. As an editor, and a movement media and narrative strategist, Harrison draws from a deep history of community organizing—beginning in 2014 during their first year at Morehouse College—to inform their cultural criticism and political thought.
Through the lens of what Harrison terms “Black Fat Studies,” they lecture widely on the intersections of blackness, fatness, and gender. Harrison currently serves as Co-Executive Director of Scalawag Magazine, where they were previously the magazine’s first Editor-at-Large. They are also a co-founder of the Movement Media Alliance (MMA), which houses projects such as Media Against Apartheid & Displacement (MAAD), Communities Beyond Elections (CBE), and other collaborative media efforts.
In addition to their editorial and organizing work, Harrison serves on the Board of Directors for the Association for Size Diversity and Health (ASDAH). They also co-host the podcast Unsolicited: Fatties Talk Back and are ⅓ of the video podcast In The Middle. Between 2019 and 2021, Harrison served as Associate Editor—and later Managing Editor—of Wear Your Voice Magazine. Their work remains grounded in abolitionist practice and destructive media.
Thursday, September 11, 2025
2:30 PM - 3:30 PM CDT