Julian Houston

Julian Houston joined judicial service and community organizing with fiction drawn from the history of school integration. Born in Richmond, Virginia, he attended the Hotchkiss School and Boston University before working in Harlem and pursuing law. New Boy, published by Houghton Mifflin in 2005, follows Rob Garrett as he becomes the first African American student at a Connecticut boarding school during the late 1950s. The novel connects Rob’s isolation on campus with the broader civil-rights struggle he encounters when he returns south. Houston later served as an associate justice of the Massachusetts Superior Court, bringing a legal career and direct knowledge of elite boarding-school culture to its historical setting. New Boy was his debut novel and received attention as teen historical fiction. Its central strength lies in showing institutional change through everyday decisions about friendship, silence, dignity, and resistance.