[2] She attended the Faculty of Armenian Philology[9] Yerevan State University from 1936 and graduated in 1941,[2] and subsequently studied at the Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Soviet Academy of Sciences from 1949 to 1950.

"[4] In 1962–1963 and 1973 she traveled throughout Armenian diaspora communities in the Middle East (Lebanon, Syria, Egypt) and North America (United States and Canada).

[11][14] In 1964 and 1976 she published two travel books, which are accounts of her visits to the Armenian communities of the Middle East, largely composed of genocide survivors and their descendants, and North America.

[16] Her wake was held at the Yerevan Opera Theatre on 29 January,[19] from where her coffin was taken to the prestigious Komitas Pantheon, where she was laid to rest.

"[23] Writer and art critic Levon Mutafyan expressed a similar view: "Hovhannes Shiraz and Silva Kaputikyan divorced later because it seemed as though the two powerful individuals couldn't live together, but Ara served as the bridge that linked them.

[4] Kaputikyan praised the prominent Russian human rights advocate Andrei Sakharov as "the conscience of the Soviet people".

Subsequently, she and Sevak were invited to Moscow, where the Soviet government sanctioned the construction of an Armenian genocide memorial in Yerevan, which was completed in 1967.

[30] In 1980 she "fretted that Armenian parents felt compelled to send their children to Russian-language schools to broaden their career opportunities."

She responded: "And does staying silent, imploring the empire-worshiping Turk-defending powers on behalf of the Armenian Cause, groveling at their feet and being left empty-handed time and again do credit to our nation?

[32][35] Kaputikyan was among the Armenian intellectuals who expressed their support of Varoujan Garabedian, the perpetrator of the 1983 Orly Airport attack in Paris.

With a flat nose, green eyes, and an elegant white bouffant hairdo, she looks like a grande dame from the court of Louis XV.

"[44] On a 26 April 1988 meeting at the Writer's Union building in Kiev, Ukraine commemorating the second anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster Kaputikyan's telegram "expressing solidarity in grief" was read at the beginning.

[45] In January 1989 Kaputikyan stated that the Metsamor Nuclear Power Plant in Armenia should be shut down and that "it had threatened to destroy the very genotype of the Armenian nation.

"[46] In 1996 Kaputikyan was among a group of 14 intellectuals who signed an open letter asking Prosecutor General Artavazd Gevorgyan to take action against Defense Minister Vazgen Sargsyan, who, in the aftermath of the 1996 presidential election, stated that his ministry would not recognize the opposition leaders "even if they win 100 percent of the votes".

He added that he regrets that is how Kaputikyan's views the "essence of our state" and does not contribute to "our nation's respect for education of the young generation.

"[64] In 1989 journalist and political analyst Bohdan Nahaylo described Kaputikyan as one of the "highly respected non-Russian cultural figures" of the Soviet Union.

[65] At a February 1988 reception in the Kremlin, Soviet Secretary General Mikhail Gorbachev said that his wife, Raisa, greatly admired Kaputikyan's poetry.

[67] On 20 January 2009, on the 90th anniversary of her birthday, the Silva Kaputikyan House-Museum was inaugurated in Yerevan in attendance of President Serzh Sargsyan and her son, Ara.

AR TV and Public Television of Armenia («Միայն ապրելը քիչ է ինձ համար», 2014) have produced documentaries on Kaputikyan.