Julian Rubinstein is an Emmy and IRE award-winning author, documentary filmmaker and educator.

In June, 2025, he won a national Emmy for directing and producing THE HOLLY, a documentary he filmed while working on his New York Times Editors' Choice book, The Holly: Five Bullets, One Gun, and the Struggle to Save an American Neighborhood, published by FSG in 2021. The book was the winner of the 2022 Colorado Book Award, the 2022 High Plains Book Award and a New York Times Editors' Choice. Booklist, which named it to its Best Books of 2021, called it "a shattering piece of investigative journalism involving street gangs, race relations and law enforcement."

The documentary is streaming on Amazon Prime, Apple Plus and Starz.

Julian's first non-fiction book, Ballad of the Whiskey Robber, is an international bestseller, chronicling the story of arguably the most popular living folk hero in the world. The book was called “an instant classic” by Canada’s Globe and Mail. It was a finalist for the Edgar Allan Poe Award and a New York Times “Editors’ Choice.”

Julian's longform magazine work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, Sports Illustrated, Travel + Leisure and others. His journalism has been collected in numerous anthologies, including Best American Essays, Best American Crime Writing, Best American Science and Nature Writing and twice in Best American Sports Writing.

He lives in Denver.