The Rockaways is revving up for its first literary festival, with book lovers expected to head to Fort Tilden on Sunday.

While Manhattan is the center of the book industry, this free, day-long festival — featuring panel discussions, book signings, poetry readings, and a screenwriting symposium — rotates the publishing orbit toward the scenic peninsula in southern Queens.

“There are plenty of writers in Rockaway,” the host of a cable access television show, John Baxter, who has lived in the area for about 45 years, said. He said the tranquility of living in an ocean-side community was attractive to writers and artists. “It settles your mind,” he said.

A resident of Belle Harbor, Stuart Mirsky, is the principal organizer of the festival, which is presented by the Rockaway Music and Arts Council. He is the author of a novel about the Vikings and Indians on the coast of North America in the 11th century. He also has experience at organizing large events, having once coordinated a group of Viking ship replicas that headed into New York Harbor.

Mr. Mirsky said the festival would add a literary dimension to the peninsula and help to build a literary community. He said he hoped it would introduce writers to one another. Unlike arts such as theater, he said, writing tends to be something of an isolated craft. It will not be isolated this Sunday, as the Rockaway Theatre Company and Rockaway Artists Alliance have joined in organizing the festival.

Mr. Mirsky conceived of the idea of a literary festival after seeing many featured on Book TV. “We could have one here,” he recalled thinking. Plans have been brewing since last spring. He said his attitude has been, “If you build it, they will come,” an optimistic line from the film “Field of Dreams,” said by a farmer who erects a baseball diamond amid Iowa cornfields.

Fort Tilden is much closer than Iowa, and writers, editors, and publishers will descend upon this decommissioned U.S. Army Post on the shores of the Atlantic next to Jacob Riis Park to discuss publishing, screenplays, and the art of writing. A summer resident from Breezy Point, Marian Lizzi, will participate on a panel that addresses how writers and publishers are adapting to the modern digital age. She is editor in chief of Perigee Books and senior editor at G.P. Putnam’s Sons.

An artist and author from Rockaway, Stephen Yaeger, a Hunter College graduate, will participate on a panel on children’s literature. Meanwhile, suspense will be the topic when horror novelist Sarah Langan, thriller writers Thomas O’Callaghan and Jonathon Linn, and espionage author Jay Lillie discuss “Writing on the Edge.”

A panel on the art of the cookbook bears the title “Eating Our Words.” In the late afternoon, there will be an awards ceremony recognizing student writers. A novelist and writing teacher from the New School’s Eugene Lang College, Jill Eisenstadt, is coordinating a children’s writing workshop. She has two forthcoming books, a collection of essays about modern marriage, “Altared” (Anchor), and a book of crime stories, “Queens Noir” (Akashic).

Mr. Mirsky said one goal of the festival is for writers to interact with those in the publishing, screenwriting, and film communities. The chairman of the television and radio department at Brooklyn College, George Rodman, will host a screenwriting panel that will include Brett Morgen, whose documentary “Chicago 10” opened the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, and whose film “On the Ropes” was nominated for an Academy Award. The director of the documentary “The Bungalows of Rockaway,” Jennifer Callahan, and co-producer Elizabeth Logan Harris will also be on hand. Their independent film chronicles the rise of the bungalows in the Rockaways, from when they began in 1906 and grew to number as many as 8,000 in the 1930s before declining to about 300 currently.

A professor of English at Brooklyn College, Robert Viscusi, will be among those reading poetry on an open-air stage.

Mr. Mirsky said he hopes that the literary festival will take root in the Rockaways, like the Rockaway Music and Arts Council’s fall art and craft festival, which is hosting its 27th annual gathering this fall. On Sunday, Mr. Mirsky will be wearing a couple of hats. He said if he is not too busy with administrative matters, he will participate in the historical fiction panel.