Kapka was born and raised in Bulgaria in the 1970s, and educated by her scientist parents, the French College in Sofia, and two New Zealand universities.
In 1990, the family moved to England, and later to New Zealand. In 2004, Kapka moved to Britain because the climate is so much better there. She lives in sunny Edinburgh as a cultural mongrel and is working on a simplified version of her East European-Kiwi-Scots accent.
Her poetry collections are Someone else's life and Geography for the Lost.
Her travel essays were twice recipients of the NZ Cathay Pacific Travel Writer of the Year award, and she used to write the occasional travel guide to keep her head above water and her feet on the road.
Kapka has written for the Guardian, The Sunday Times, Vogue, the Times Literary Supplement, The Scottish Review of Books, and BBC Radio 4 and Radio 3. She teaches at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow.
Street Without a Name came out in 2008. It's a coming of age story at the end of Communism, and an unsentimental journey across post-communist Bulgaria. It was short-listed for the Prix Européen du Livre and the Dolman Travel Book Award in 2009.
Villa Pacifica, a novel set in South America, came out in the UK in August 2011.
Kapka's tango memoir Twelve Minutes of Love came out in November 2011.
