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 the IRA. He said of joining the IRA: "There was a lot of soul-searching. It's not like joining a state army, where someone signs their name, gets a uniform and rifle, and the chaplain blesses them." In August 1976, McKeown was arrested and charged with causing a series of bomb explosions and the attempted murder of a member of the Royal Ulster Constabulary. At his trial in April 1977, McKeown was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment in the Maze Prison. McKeown refused to recognise the courts. Imprisonment and hunger strike McKeown took part in the blanket at the Maze Prison upon arrival in 1978 with the aim of resecuring Special Category Status for convicted paramilitary prisoners, which had been lost in 1975. He then joined the subsequent no-wash protest in 1978. In late 1980 the protest escalated and seven prisoners took part in a hunger strike, aimed at restoring political status by securing what were known as the "Five Demands": The right not to wear a prison uniform; The right not to do prison work; The right of free association with other prisoners, and to organise educational and recreational pursuits; The right to one visit, one letter and one parcel per week; Full restoration of remission lost through the protest. The strike ended before any prisoners had died and without political status being secured, and a second hunger strike began on 1 March 1981 led by Bobby Sands, the IRA's former Officer Commanding in the prison. McKeown joined the strike on 29 June, after Sands and three other prisoners had died. Following the deaths of six other prisoners, McKeown's family authorised medical intervention to save his life on 6 September, the 70th day of his hunger strike. He described his recollection of the events in an interview: "We were committed to something. Unless someone was coming in and saying “Right, you have your own clothes, you won’t do prison work,