She has worked at the Washington City Paper, SPIN, Time Out New York, ELLEgirl, EW, Modern Painters, Kinfolk and other publications.
O'Hara co-founded chickfactor[2] magazine in 1992 with indie-pop singer Pam Berry (Black Tambourine, glo-worm, The Pines, Bright Coloured Lights, the Shapiros, etc.).
O'Hara founded Enchanté Records in 1993 after Connie Lovatt from Alkaline and Fontaine Toups from Versus formed a band called Containe and had their first show at a chickfactor party in New York.
Enchanté released a compilation in 2002 titled All's Fair in Love and... chickfactor[6] featuring chickfactor favorites, including Pipas, Dump, The Would-Be-Goods, The Magnetic Fields, The Pacific Ocean, Low, The Pines, The Clientele, The Aislers Set, Foxgloves, Marine Research, Graeme Downes (Verlaines), The Cannanes with Astra, and many others.
Along with editing chickfactor, O'Hara was the Music Editor of Time Out New York where she hired Stephin Merritt, LD Beghtol, Claudia Gonson, Bob Bannister, Franklin Bruno and other musicians to write alongside the regular critics.