Joseph Crilly (1962-2017) was an Irish playwright. Born in Ballymacash in County Armagh, he lived for more than three decades in London, where he variously worked as an actor, journalist and social worker. He was arts editor of the Irish Post in the 1990s.

He is best known for his trilogy of plays on Ulster: Second-Hand Thunder (1998), its companion piece On McQuillan's Hill (2000) and Kitty & Damnation (2009). The three have been published together as The Crilly Trilogy. On McQuillan's Hill, which was originally staged at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast was revived at the Finborough Theatre in 2020.

In May 2017, Crilly killed himself in a hotel room in Perpignan.^[1][2]