Laurence McKeown (born 1956) is an Irish author, playwright, screenwriter, and former volunteer in the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) who took part in the 1981 Irish hunger strike. == Background and IRA activity == McKeown was born in 1956 in Randalstown, County Antrim, Northern Ireland. He attended St Malachy's College, Belfast. As a teenager, McKeown had ambitions of becoming an architect and started working in the offices of a quantity surveyor when aged 15. When aged 16 he joined…