Anca was born in 1948 in Bucharest, Romania. Her father, a political prisoner of the Communist regime in Romania, died when Anca was eight. After a sojourn in Paris and Brussels, at fourteen she immigrated to the United States with her mother, a prominent Romanian intellectual and a survivor of Auschwitz. Anca is Professor Emerita of Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, where she taught English and Comparative Literature for 39 years. She is married to Anthony Ambrogio, a writer and editor. They have two grown daughters, a daughter-in-law, and a granddaughter.

Anca Vlasopolos has published seven books—the non-fiction novel The New Bedford Samurai; a memoir (No Return Address: A Memoir of Displacement); four poetry collections: Penguins in a Warming World, Walking Toward Solstice,  Cartographies of Scale (and Wing), and Often Fanged Light; a detective novel (Missing Members); various short stories; and over 200 poems.

Anca has been creating pottery for over 20 years. She has sold her work in Detroit and on Cape Cod, at the Cultural Museum of Cape Cod and various art shows.