After finishing primary school in Sopot, Mincho send his son to Kalofer, appointing him assistant teacher. Having passed his final exams in Kalofer, the young teacher returned to Sopot to help in his father's grocery. The next year his father send him to Plovdiv to Naiden Gerov's school. There Vazov made his first steps as a poet.

He returned to Sopot and then went to Olteniţa in Romania to study trade despite his lack of interest in it. He was immersed in literature. Soon he left Olteniţa and went to Brăila where he met Hristo Botev, a Bulgarian revolutionary and poet. From Brăila he went to Galaţi to his uncle where he met Botev again.

In 1874 he joined the struggle for his country's independence from the Ottoman Empire. He returned to Sopot in 1875 where he became a member of the local revolutionary committee. After the failure of the April Uprising of 1876, he had to flee the country, going back to Galaţi, where most of the surviving revolutionaries were exiled. There he was appointed a secretary of the committee.

Vazov was probably heavily influenced by Hristo Botev, who was the ideological leader of the Bulgarian revolutionary movement. He started writing his famous poems with Botev and some other Bulgarian emigrants in Romania. In 1876 he published his first work, Priaporetz and Gusla , followed by "Bulgaria's Sorrows" in 1877.

Bulgaria regained its independence in 1878 as a result of the Russo - Turkish War, 1877 - 1878 and Vazov wrote the famous Epic of the Forgotten. He became the editor of the political reviews "Science" and "Dawn." He was, however, forced into exile once again, this time to Odessa, because of the persecution of the russophile political faction. Returning to Bulgaria with the help of his mother Suba Vazova, he started teaching. Vazov's next stay was in Svishtov, where he became a civil servant.

He moved to Sofia in 1889 where he started publishing the review Dennitsa.

Vazov's 1893 novel Under the Yoke, which depicts the Ottoman oppression of Bulgaria, is the most famous piece of classic Bulgarian literature and has been translated into over 30 languages.

Later in his life Vazov was a prominent and widely respected figure in the social and cultural life of newly independent Bulgaria.
Some of the other famous works by Vazov include the novels New Country (1894), Under Our Heaven (1900), The Empress of Kazalar (1902), Songs of Macedonia (1914), It Will Not Perish (1920) and the plays Vagabonds (1894), Borislav (1909) and Ivaylo (1911).

Vazov's home in Sofia has been turned into a museum, containing a restoration of his residence with period furnishings, as well as Vazov's taxidermically preserved dog. The Bulgarian Ivan Vazov National Theatre in Sofia is named after him. The Ivan Vazov National Library (Bulgarian: Народна библиотека "Иван Вазов") in Plovdiv is also named after Vazov. A park near St. Sofia Church in Sofia features the city's best known monument to Vazov. Vazovova Street in Bratislava, Slovakia, and Vazov Point and Vazov Rock on Livingston Island in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica, are also named after Ivan Vazov.