Katrina vanden Heuvel was born in New York City, the daughter of Jean Stein, an heiress, best-selling author, and editor of the literary journal Grand Street, and William vanden Heuvel, an attorney, former US ambassador, member of John F. Kennedy's administration, businessman, and author.

Her maternal grandparents were Music Corporation of America founder Jules C. Stein and Doris Babbette Jones (originally Jonas).

in politics from Princeton University in 1981 after completing a senior thesis titled "American Victims: A Study of the Anti-Communist Crusade.

"[6] While at Princeton, she served as an editor and eventually as editor-in-chief of the Nassau Weekly, a school publication, and had an internship at National Lampoon magazine in 1978.

[7] By 1995, The Nation was losing $500,000 a year, and its editor Victor Navasky brought vanden Heuvel together with other investors in a for-profit partnership to buy the magazine from investment banker Arthur L.

[9] Katrina Vanden Heuvel has written more than 140 articles for The Washington Post's Opinion Pieces section, from 2011[10] to as recently as 2022.

[11] She received criticism from fellow journalist Wendy Kaminer[12] in 2019 based on the reporting standards of her article "Citizens United".

[10] With her husband, Stephen F. Cohen, vanden Heuvel edited Voices of Glasnost: Interviews with Gorbachev's Reformers (Norton, 1989).

[citation needed] She won the NYCLU's Callaway Prize for the Defense of the Right of Privacy[19] and the American-Arab Anti-discrimination Committee's "Voices of Peace" award in 2003.

[5][20] They were married by Presbyterian minister and peace activist William Sloane Coffin in a non-denominational ceremony.