The stories, poems, essays and memoirs anthologized in Beyond Boundaries take their inspiration from the theme of emancipation. Produced solely by the members of Redwood Writers, these collected works reflect our quest for freedom, the tyrannies large and small we strive to overcome, and the rush of exhilaration that liberty brings.

About the Book... Vintage Voices: The Sound of a Thousand Leaves anthologizes works by members of Redwood Writers. These collected stories, essays, and poems reveal our human connection through common experiences, a connection that rises from the page and touches the reader's consciousness. Over 65 works represent the whimsical, alarming, funny, and sincere elements of life. Like leaves tumbling down, spent from deep roots, these stories and poems resonate with the beauty and startling present moments of life.

We are poets of California. The poems in this collection capture the coast, the mountains and the city. We are on the road and in our own hearts, a journey fueled by imagination and social commentary. We honor the Beats in this collection because so many of us were influenced by the works of poets like Di Prima, Kerouac, Ginsberg and Snyder. Kerouac himself published the definition of the Beats in Esquire Magazine: " the beats are] a generation of crazy, illuminated hipsters suddenly rising and roaming America, serious, curious, bumming and hitchhiking everywhere. Ragged, beatific, beautiful in an ugly graceful new way . . . Beat, meaning down and out but full of intense conviction." The beats asked questions with a different rhythm. They delivered answers with new syncopation, a rift of who went before, while simultaneously creating something new. Creating anything new in the middle of the 20th century was a risky venture. American society wanted to recover from world war II and settle down, not ask any more questions, not make waves. Or as Diane de Prima said, "In the fifties... we were so busy being cool that we didn't know how to say the word love." The Beats risked rejection, careers, arrest, jail, and the asylum, for their art. Not that mental instability or extreme drug experimentation is a prerequisite for creativity but a little lunacy, an afternoon stroll along the edge of perception and society, can help create the new, the mad, the insightful. And that's what our poets do, walk that line, balanced between everyday life and something wild. We invite you to take as many moments as you have, and swing with us.

Open Vintages Voices: Four-Part Harmony to find a choir of voices harmonizing through poems, essays, short stories and memoir. While each voice is different, each is note-worthy. Our voices tell of growing up and growing old, our past and our present, and, most importantly, our connection to each other. Our voices are celebratory, poignant, humorous, or sad, yet the collective effect is a symphony in four-part harmony.