[3][4] Her mother grew up in Queens, New York, and her maternal grandfather, Joseph Marks, was a vice-president of the Doubleday publishing company.

She was raised in Durham, North Carolina, and attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, at the age of 15.

The magazine released a limited-edition Sonic Youth flexi-disc (a cover of the New York Dolls song "Personality Crisis").

[6] The magazine's affinity for indie rock led to the formation of the band Chia Pet, which counted Sassy writer Christina Kelly and Pratt as members.

[7] Chia Pet released "Blind Date" on the Kokopop label in 1992, which won simultaneous Single of the Week honors in both NME and Melody Maker.

Pratt is the author of two books, For Real: The Uncensored Truth About America's Teenagers (Hyperion, September 1995) and Beyond Beauty: Girls Speak Out on Looks, Style and Stereotypes, which is published by Callaway Editions in association with Clarkson Potter.

Other colleagues have included singer Michael Stipe, whom she dated; director Spike Jonze, whom she hired as editor of short-lived teenage boy–targeted Dirt magazine; actress Chloë Sevigny, who was once a summer intern at Sassy; and Pamela Anderson, who wrote a regular monthly column for Jane.

On July 25, 2005, Pratt announced that she was resigning from her position as editor-in-chief of Jane and would be leaving the company on September 30, 2005, exactly eight years after its debut issue.

Like Sassy and Jane before it, xoJane.com is written by a group of women (and some token males) with strong voices, identities, and opinions, many in direct opposition to each other, who are living what they are writing about."