How can the author's biography affect his work?

Some writers choose to write stories that are completely
divergent from their own biography.  Writers of supernatural, fantasy, science fiction
and horror stories are probably writing from their imagination, not from their own
experience.  Which isn't to say that who they are and their point of view on life
doesn't affect their writing, it simply isn't the foundation of these sorts of
work.

I think that we must be very careful, when we analyze
works of fiction in an attempt to make a connection to the writers biography.  Art isn't
as simple -- whether it be writing novels, plays, short stories, or poems (or creating
paintings, dances,  or music) -- as looking to the life events of the creator and
deciding that we, from the outside, can determine where the inspiration comes
from.

The Greeks believed that Art (including writing) was
inspired by the Muses.  These were goddesses who blew the inspiration into the creator
and gave birth to the idea that became the work.  This notion that inspiration just
arrives, that it isn't the culmination of the creator's life experiences, is as valid as
considering the author's biography when searching for an explanation for creative
genesis of ideas.