Gail O’Hara is the letter O music journalist in this month’s Music Journalism A-Z series. She provides an introspective glimpse that has added expansive quality to my music listening and viewing habits.

Gail O’Hara is an US editor, writer, photographer, recording label owner, and filmmaker.

Gail O’Hara co-founded Chickfactor Magazine in 1992 with indie-pop singer Pam Berry. Today Chickfactor is a Web Blog.

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 along with the regular critics. She has also worked at SPIN magazine, theWashington City Paper, ELLEgirl magazine, Entertainment Weekly, Monocle, CNN Traveller, Happy, Modern Painters, Interview, CMJ, and had a regular pop music column in the Times of London.

She is a gifted and multifaceted creative. Gail is an advocate for the indie music and arts scene. I have benefited vastly in my relative short exposure to her published multimedia expression.

“These essays make the reader want to explore the music of these artists if they have not been fans before. That is what good music writing should do—it should pull the reader into the music.” – New York Journal of Books

My first related discovery is the music that Gail O’Hara is focused on sharing,  Stephen Merritt and the Magnetic Fields. It didn’t take me but two listens to know I had a new rich vein of music to mine.

From the first few tracks right through to the film Gail O’Hara made, Strange Powers  Stephen Merritt and The Magnetic Fields I became hooked immediately.