“This is where I bought most of my books,” Saraciea J. Fennell said, pointing out to East Fordham Road in the Bronx from the Starbucks where we met in April. Among the check cashing locations, pawn shops and bodegas that lined the commercial thoroughfare when she was growing up, she said, were street vendors selling an assortment of books — from urban fiction to dictionaries.

On Saturday, the Bronx Book Festival, a literary event organized by Ms. Fennell, will take place in that same neighborhood, at Fordham Plaza. The all-day event will bring writers, illustrators and industry professionals to the community, as well as a vendor to sell books on-site.

“I attended my first book festival as an adult in Brooklyn,” said Ms. Fennell, 29, who works as a publicist for Tor Books, an imprint of MacMillan. “I thought to myself, ‘This is amazing. Why doesn’t the Bronx have something like this?’”