About the Author

Zahran Moore is a Santa Barbara-based musician, writer, and poet, and is the creator of The Pedaling Poet's Blog.

Raised by an artist mother and musician father, Zahran has been immersed in the world of creativity his whole life. At the age of 17, he started busking at local farmers' markets, playing a ukulele or sometimes a homemade cigar-box guitar, and one year later, a real guitar. Even then, Zahran never foresaw himself performing to audiences beyond the farmers and shoppers. That all changed in the summer of 2022, when The Blue Owl Restaurant started a weekly live music showcase, and Zahran was one of the first artists to participate. Since then, he's made regular appearances at the event as it evolved into more of an open mic format, where many of the best musicians in town come to share their talents. To this day, you can see and hear Zahran play there, as well as at the Tuesday farmers' market on State Street.

Zahran used to have a complicated relationship with writing. He'd always loved books and reading, but handwriting was one of those tedious skills he felt forced to learn. It was only when he got his first computer in third grade and began typing that he unlocked his passion for writing. He would eventually go on to study rhetorical analysis in high school, breaking down the works of great authors to understand what made them so evocative and effective. Whether in serious literary exploration or expressive poetry composition, the keyboard has come to be his best creative partner, providing a bridge between the wild meadows of imagination and the virtual city blocks of pages on a screen. After graduating in 2021, Zahran took on the penname The Pedaling Poet and launched the eponymous blog as a platform to share his written words with the wider world. The website covers a broad selection of topics, ranging from personal life stories to speculative essays and social commentary.