The New England Literature Program (NELP) is an academic program run by the University of Michigan that takes place off-campus during the spring half-term. University of Michigan faculty and other staff teach the courses, and students earn regular University of Michigan credit. The program has been in existence since 1975 and has an endowed permanent directorship in the English Department to ensure NELP's continuation.
The program, founded by English professors Walter Clark and Alan Howes, takes place at Camp Kabeyun on Lake Winnipesaukee in Alton Bay, New Hampshire. and at Camp Wohelo and Camp Mataponi on Sebago Lake in Maine.
The program is grounded in the writings of 18th and 19th-century writers such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, Frederick Douglass, and Herman Melville, as well as more modern writers like Sarah Orne Jewett, Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, Carolyn Chute, E. E. Cummings, Louise Glück, Galway Kinnell, Jorie Graham, Morgan Talty, Ruth Stone, In particular, Thoreau's Walden has been described as the Bible of NELP. Diane Cook, formerly a producer at Public Radio International's This American Life and author of Man V. Nature, a 2014 book of short stories published by Harper Collins; Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn; food journalist Francis Lam; indie folk singer Chris Bathgate; and bluegrass singer Rebecca Frazier.
In 2018, alumna Dana Nessel was elected Attorney General of the State of Michigan.