The subject matter of Munro’s works has quite clearly developed from her own experiences; while these works are not autobiographical the author claimed in many interviews that they are an ‘emotional reality’. Munro’s life experiences of growing up in a relatively poor provincial southwestern Ontario town during

the depression, negotiating the rebelliousness and idealism of adolescence, discovering sex, leaving home, testing herself at university, falling in love, getting married, having children, getting divorced, making a living, and getting along in a variety of complicated relationships all inform the fiction she creates.

But perhaps the greatest praise for Munro’s work comes from Pulitzer Prize winning author, Jane Smiley who says,

Most of Munro’s stories also deal with the utter subjectivity of truth - our inability to see things through others' eyes. Many of her characters appear to be isolated and consider themselves outsiders -, as do many writers. The author expresses that because she herself grew up in a community where no one read and to express one’s interest in reading was embarrassing, she already felt like an outsider. This comes through loud and clear in a lot of her short stories. Other disguises of the writer that seem to stand out in her stories are her desire for popularity and the need to come out of the closet as a writer when she became a suburban housewife.

In one particular interview with D.J Bruckner, Munro herself expressed that her mother in particular kept popping up in many of her stories. Conducting the interview, Bruckner observes, “indeed, her mother's life and death are the subject of the title story in 'Friend of My Youth.’” (1999). In the same place, Munro herself says, ''That is about my mother, quite undisguisedly,'' she said. ''You keep revising your attitude toward your parents, you know. You keep finding out new things about them as you grow older.''

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