Then they read them and, perhaps for the first time, they are listened to, respectfully. They are new to the game -- not English majors or aspirants to be the great American novelist. These writers cull themselves from the thousands of guests at the soup kitchen at the Church of the Holy Apostles in New York.

Essays and poems produced in these postprandial sessions have been gathered into a volume aptly titled Food for the Soul. The well-reviewed book was excerpted in The New York Times and featured on NBC’s Today show.

“On the one hand, the stories in the book are specific to being homeless and living on the street, but on the other, they are humanly universal, painful stories,” says the Rev. Elizabeth Maxwell, associate rector and program director at Holy Apostles.

The workshop was founded in 1993 by Ian “Sandy” Frazier, who wrote On the Rez and Dating Your Mom, among other essays and novels. He had received a grant from the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Foundation to establish an arts program; the grant supported the program for the first three years. Today, the annual cost of less than $10,000 comes from the New York State Council on the Arts, donations (including from teachers who return their salaries) and royalties from the book.

Frazier, Maxwell says, is so “down-to-earth that sometimes, when he arrives early, he is asked if he is here to eat lunch.” The plan, as originally laid out by Frazier, has guests and instructors write for 40 minutes after lunch on topics suggested by an instructor. Nelson Blackman wrote about a fire on Christmas Eve, his "Worst Night." Jay Stockman wrote about his "Secret Place," the entryway at Holy Apostles where the workshop meets. On "Religion,” Carol West wrote: “Mornings when I awake, I always say, ‘Thank you, God, I have another day.’” Writers read their works aloud and comment on others’ work.

During the week, a typist transcribes the hand-written drafts and photocopies them for editing at the next session. At the end of the course, teachers assemble the manuscripts at a copy shop for sale to the church at a public reading.

The instructors, including the book’s co-editor, Susan Shapiro, come largely from Frazier’s contacts. Shapiro, who wrote Five Men Who Broke My Heart and Lighting Up, teaches writing at The New School and New York University. Frazier and Shapiro, both memoirists, encourage the soup-kitchen storytellers to write autobiographically.

“I pushed them into using first person,” says Shapiro. “They wanted to write fiction, and I said, ‘No, do journalism -- that’s literature in a hurry. We can get that published.’” Indeed, with Shapiro’s exhorting, editing and engineering, a number of the works have appeared in print, from Harper’s to The New York Times.

“People have a stupid misconception about the homeless or addicts, many of whom are smart and educated,” says Shapiro. “We’re all just one step away from being poor or homeless.” The writers’ program, she adds, is “so compassionate -- it crosses lines of class, religion, color and gender. It’s kind and important.”

More than 250 writers have participated in the program, so Maxwell and Shapiro had reams to choose from for Food for the Soul, including works produced by people who had participated for all 10 years.

“We used only the work of people who have died or who signed permission slips,” says Shapiro. “Getting them signed was not easy -- many of our writers have no homes and no phones, so we had to go to shelters to find them.”

The Holy Apostles Writers’ Workshop has mattered in many lives. Maxwell relates the story of a woman “hungry in every way,” who came “flat broke” to the soup kitchen and to the workshop. “She told me that writing allowed her to speak for herself. After years of trouble with alcohol and depression, she found her voice and used it to ask for help.”