Barry McCrea (born October 15, 1974) is an Irish writer and academic. He grew up in Dalkey, Co. Dublin, and was educated at the Jesuit Gonzaga College, and Trinity College, Dublin (1993–1997) where he studied French and Spanish literature. He received a Ph.D from Princeton University in 2004, and currently teaches Comparative Literature at Yale University.
His novel The First Verse was published by Carroll & Graf in 2005. It was awarded the 2006 Ferro-Grumley prize for fiction, and nominated for an American Library Association award. The plot explores the concept of the Sortes Virgilianae.
The First Verse was published in Spanish as "Literati" (DestinoLibro, 2006) and in German as "Die Poeten der Nacht" (Aufbau, 2008).