LaDarrion Williams Books In Order

Publication Order of Blood at the Root Books

LaDarrion Williams is a published American author, playwright, screenwriter, and filmmaker. His stated goal is to help to cultivate a ‘new era of Black fantasy’ and also give space and agency for stories that feature black characters to come about in a way that is new and fresh.

He comes from Helena, Alabama, a small town.

When it comes to writing plays, his play Katrina was entered into the Alabama State Thespian Conference where it won first place. His play Black Creek Risin’ was a part of Omaha, Nebraska’s Great Plains Theatre Conference. Coco Queens, his play, was also invited to be part of the 2019 Sundance Institute’s Playwriting Intensive. It premiered at Playhouse on the Square July 2024.

His plays have also received recognition from the Eugene O’Neill National Playwriting conference, the National Black Theatre I AM SOUL Playwriting Fellowship, the American Blues 2023 Blue Ink Award, and the David Ross Fetzer Foundation for Emerging Artist Theatre Grant.

LaDarrion is an alumnus of the Echo Theatre Playwrights Lab as well as the Boise Contemporary Theater BIPOC Playwrights Festival.

His play Boulevard of Bold Dreams was Jeff Award nominated. It was about Hattie McDaniel’s Oscar Win and was part of the New Works Festival held in Santa Monica, California at the Morgan-Wixson Theatre. It would also get its world premiere in Chicago at the TimeLine Theatre Company and on the east coast at the Greater Boston Stage Company.

It has also been part of the Orlando Shakes Theater Signature Series and was slated to be produced at various theaters across the United States for the 2024 to 2025 season. He has written three different shorts, Blood at the Root, Unless It’s With You, and Concrete Rose.

His young adult book Blood at the Root was acquired by Labyrinth Rose (a Penguin Random House imprint) in a competitive auction.

Blood at the Root is the first fictional novel to come out from LaDarrion Williams. A fresh new voice in the literary community, this is a great story to check out if you are looking for something new and different. A great read for young adults and adults can read it too!

A teen named Malik is on the run from the past and through the process ends up finding a family that he never even knew was out there. He also ends up finding a community that he didn’t even know that he needed in his life at a historically black college and university for the young, magical, and Black.

Malik discovered that his life was about to change for good a decade ago. That was the night that his mother went missing and he also found out that he had powers that he cannot control. He’s done what he’s been able to do since then to keep his abilities to himself and look after his own life as well as for Taye, his younger foster brother.

Malik is now seventeen years old and is ready to set out and begin a new life and help both of them start over. He envisions leaving the trauma of the past far behind them and just beginning again. Maybe the two will be able to be happy this time.

However, when he tries to rescue Taye it may end up unearthing a connection with his long-last past and a conjurer that has a connection to a magical university hidden from the world. The same university that apparently his mother attended a long time ago.

Malik’s eyes were opened at Caiman University to the type of future that he never saw for himself. In this future, his first love Alexis shows up once more. He is looking for answers about his powers, his heritage, his past, and what really happened to his mother.

Looking for the truth may end up showing more of the cracks in this university than some would like. It’s also starting to show the cracks in the local magical community, and things only get more intense when an evil that goes back all the way to the Haitian Revolution wakes up once more.

Malik is going to have to work together with Alexis and finds out more, discovering information about politics, covens, forbidden knowledge and mysteries that have been buried for a long time. Malik must take in his legacy and save what remains of his former family as well as the new one that he has made.

To do so, he has to get to the bottom of secrets and get down to their roots. Can he succeed in this magical world or will his insistence on getting answers mean that he is too much of a threat to be allowed to continue? Read this intriguing fictional fantasy from LaDarrion Williams to find out!