Zsófia Balla was born in Kolozsvár (Cluj-Napoca), After studying violin at the music high school there, she went on to graduate with a teaching degree from the city's music academy in 1972. Her first poems appeared in 1965, and she published her first volume of verse, Memories of Things, in 1986. She headed Kolozsvár's Gábor Gaál Literary Circle from 1978 until 1982, and also taught Hungarian folk music and the reading and writing of music in the town of Dés (Dej). Prevented from leaving Romania during the 1980s, she was also faced with a partial publishing ban. In 1984 and 1991, she received the Poetry Award of the Association of Romanian Writers. Between 1990 and 1994, she served as literary editor of the weeklies Family Mirror and The Week, and became a full member of the Association of Hungarian Writers in 1990 and a member of the editorial staff of the Pécs-based literary journal The Present Age. She has lived in Hungary since 1993. In 1997, she became a founding member of the Hungarian Society of Writers, and she has been a full member of the Széchenyi Academy of Literature and Arts since 2013. Since 2005, she has served as a hostess of regular poetry-recitation programmes at the Studio K Theatre. She has won numerous distinctions for her her work, including the Attila József Award (1996), the Palladium Award (2003) and the Artisjus Literary Award (2010). She was named a Laureate of the Republic of Hungary in 2008.
