Career Development: Developing a professional mentor relationship (5 pts) Ayanna Lonon

This year, I’ve had the privilege of developing a professional and academic mentor relationship with Professor Ariana Benson, a poet, scholar, and Spelman faculty member. I first encountered her work last year in a course called Contemporary Black Writers, where we studied her poetry collection Black Pastoral. Since then, I’ve engaged with her in multiple roles: as my cohort leader during the UNCF Mellon Mays Summer Institute, a mentor through the Spelman Honors Program, and soon (hopefully) as a guiding voice on a literary zine I’m producing.

Her poetry collection includes several poems titled “Love Poems in the Black Field,” a phrase that stayed with me long after the course ended. While conducting research on Black cultural production this summer at the Mellon Mays Summer Institute, I realized how central “the Black field” is as both a literal and metaphorical space across disciplines. At the same time, Professor Benson helped me refine my research prospectus and guided me to literature that would support it. She helped me to develop a conceptual anchor and theoretical framework through which to approach my research, inspiring the title of my research prospectus at the end of the program, “Sovereignty in the Black Field of Cultural Production.” 

Our relationship continues to evolve as I explore the intersections of creative writing, publishing, and diasporic African studies. Professor Benson's extensive experience with publishing makes her an invaluable mentor, helping me understand how to sustain a career in the literary arts while honoring the intellectual and cultural traditions I care about.

Through her guidance, I’m exploring how Black people access and affirm personhood through cultural production, both historically and in the present moment. This mentorship has fundamentally shifted how I view scholarship—not as isolated work, but as communal, creative, and deeply personal. Professor Benson exemplifies the kind of scholar-artist I aspire to become.

We don't have a photo together, but believe me- we know each other! Lol 

By: Ayanna Lonon