Laura Ohata has written for Austin Monthly, Good Life, and Austin Family magazines. After earning a degree in anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin in 1993, Ohata moved to Nagoya, Japan, where she taught English to engineers at Toyota and Mitsubishi. In her spare time, she studied martial arts and the tea ceremony, photographing Japanese castles, gardens, and chatting with the occasional Zen monk on a moped.

In 1997, Ohata returned to Austin, where she earned an M.A. in Communication from the University of Texas Department of Radio/TV/Film in 2001. In 1999, Ohata's screenplay, Granny Vigilante, advanced to the second round at the Austin Film Festival screenwriting competition.

Ohata began freelancing after the birth of her second son in 2004. Specializing in personality profiles and how-to articles, she loves to write about filmmakers, authors, entrepreneurs, artists and architects.