[3] Born on July 10, 1944, during the immediate aftermath of the air Bombing of Sofia in World War II, to her father Peter – a son of Russian-Ukrainian immigrants, and to her mother Vassilisa – a half-Greek, half-Bulgarian tailor.

Her grandfather Ivan Skander was an army general of Russian-Circassian descent who served under Tsar Nicholas II, and left Russia for Bulgaria shortly after the start of the Russian Civil War of 1917 as part of the white émigré, along with his wife – Ukrainian countess Anastasia Zhitskaya, Petkova's paternal grandmother.

[4] In the early days of Petkova's career, these facts allegedly served as the main reason for a ban imposed on her poetry by Bulgaria's Communist Party, although the official explanation was "due to erotic content found in her poems".

She also worked as a translator at the Bulgarian Embassy in Khartoum, Sudan – the homeland of her future husband Dr. Nouri Sadiq Oraby, PhD, a Sudanese geography teacher of Nubian descent, whom she married in 1966.

The same year, Petkova published her second poetry book titled Bullets In The Sand, followed by her third and most popular piece The Sinner, which was subsequently banned by the Bulgarian Communist Party because of the verse "There!

[7] It is reported that Petkova had close ties with American social activist Angela Davis, former Palestinian President and Nobel Peace Prize winner Yasser Arafat, writers Pablo Neruda, William Saroyan, and South African singer Miriam Makeba amongst others.

While in Odessa, she translated the works of a number of Ukrainian writers and poets to Bulgarian, and began writing her autobiographical novel, titled God is Love, which remained unfinished.

[9] Vanya Petkova is also the author of a number of song lyrics, including Disco by Bulgarian rock-'n'-roll band Trick with lead singer Etienne Levy, Younga's Love by Margaret Nikolova, The Rabbit by Bulgarian rock band Dissonance, The Old Bells by Yordan Marchinkov (nominated Melody of The Year), and the symbolic anthem of the Armenian Community in Bulgaria titled Armenian Eyes and composed by Haygashot Agasyan, among others.

[6] In 2021, the book Pirate Poems was fully translated from Bulgarian to English by Snezhana Sokolova and republished in Los Angeles, California by Vanya Petkova's youngest grandson, actor and director Joseph Al Ahmad.

A week after publishing what would become her last book during her lifetime – Pirate Poems; On April 26, 2009, aged 64, Petkova died from cardiac arrest in the small Bulgarian town of Parvomay, located in the Rhodope Mountains.

It was born in between face slaps and fistfights, gunshots and knife-throws, handcuffs and bloodstains, daring escapes followed by chases, desert adventures in Syria and Sudan, between airplanes and high speeds, steamboats and horse rides, thugs and their prostitutes, between outrageous children and ungrateful darlings, between Heaven and Earth, between Life and Death.

[14] The museum house is currently being renovated, with an expected official opening to be held in 2024 by Petkova's family, as mentioned in a 2021 op-ed by her daughter, Bulgarian journalist Olia Al-Ahmed.