Aric Knuth is the Director of the New England Literature Program, where 40 students and 13 UM instructors live for 6 1/2 weeks on a lake in New England and work and learn together, studying both creative writing and the literature of New England (from Hawthorne, Dickinson, Thoreau, and Emerson to Chute, Gluck, Kinnell, and Ruth Stone.)  Because the group takes trips each week (into the mountains, to the seacoast) and students are encouraged to think ecologically about the world around them, the environment and our interaction with it is very important to the work of NELP. The program takes place each year during UM's spring semester; applications due in early January. Please visit http://www.lsa.umich.edu/nelp for more information.