Charles W. Pratt, born in Concord, Massachusetts, attended Phillips Exeter Academy for his high school years, and then returned there to teach in the 1960s. In the early 1980s, he and his wife Joan bought an apple orchard in nearby Brentwood, which they operated until 2011, when they turned over the orchard to new owners in order to keep it active.

The central poems of his first book, In the Orchard (Tidal Press, 1986, with drawings by Arthur Balderacchi) were written with the encouragement of an Individual Artist Grant from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts; his chapbook Still Here (winner of the Finishing Line Press Prize in Poetry) followed in 2008.

The Pratts have two children and five grandchildren. Charlie died in 2012. His memorial service at Phillips Church at Phillips Exeter was attended by over 500 people and was designed around his poems.