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If you chat with author and journalist Pete Hamill, you are going to hear some stories. And he'll tell you how much books meant to him growing up in Park Slope.

"It gave me a sense of a much wider world that existed outside the tenement that I grew up in and the need for stories," Hamill said.

Hamill is one of more than 280 authors taking part in the seventh annual Brooklyn Book Festival. It's had events all week, but the big one is on Sunday at Borough Hall Plaza and other nearby locations. There will be readings and panels on 14 stages and a literary marketplace.

"We like to think that there is a little bit of something for everybody and all of New York City and beyond at the festival," said Brooklyn Literary Council Chairperson Johnny Temple.

Pete Hamill will be honored with this year's Best of Brooklyn award. It honors an author who has had a broad impact on the world of literature. Hamill gives all the credit to his native borough.

"If it wasn't for Brooklyn and it wasn't for the way I grew up and it wasn't for the little local library up in Park Slope, who knows what I might have been. That gave me my life," Hamill said.

Hamill says he has been a regular at the Book Festival since it began.

"I don't care whether it's on a Kindle or in a book, I think a doctor is a better doctor if he's read Anna Karenina. I think a lawyer is a better lawyer if he has read Madame Bovary. I think everybody not just other writers should read like predators, because it's food for the human spirit," Hamill added.

Sunday's events run from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

For more information, visit brooklynbookfestival.org.