Larry M. Lake has taught writing at Messiah College since 1984. Shaped profoundly by a childhood in New Guinea, where his parents were missionaries from 1957-1965, his professional life has since then been lived in many places where faith, writing, and culture intersect. Sometimes this has entailed international travel including two sabbaticals in Indonesia as ethnographic researcher, education specialist, and literacy consultant. His doctoral dissertation at University of Pennsylvania, about the ways writing teachers can adapt to the learning styles of their students, was based on one of these expeditions.

He has sailed with legendary Hawaiian navigator Nainoa Thompson on the Polynesian cultural research vessel Hokole’a. He has studied literacy in Mexican cities with Bible translators and dictionary makers, and interviewed historians, entomologists and rainforest ecologists in Netherlands universities and libraries. He has examined New Guinea plant collections at the Netherlands National Herbarium in Leiden. He and his wife Mary Beth served as professional photographers, documenting the work of Mission Aviation Fellowship in New Guinea. His wide range of interests have led to a variety of teaching assignments in subjects as diverse as cultural anthropology, ethnobotany, postcolonial literatures, Pacific island foods, and the history of colonial expeditions.

He helped a retired missionary seaplane pilot write a memoir, assisted the photographer Susan Meiselas with the book Encounters with the Dani, and is looking forward to the publication of his book Richard Archbold in New Guinea: Money, Power, and Science in the Colonial Pacific.