About BALLOONS Lit. JOurnal
First established in 2014, BALLOONS Lit. Journal (BLJ) is the ONLY young-reader-oriented literary journal that is FREELY accessible to all by online reading with a fully edited ready-to-print PDF version downloadable for every issue.
          BLJ is Hong Kong-based, independent and biannual, publishing quality poetry, fiction and art/photography primarily for readers from around 12+. We do not sell print versions at this stage though it may be an option in the future.
​          We welcome submissions from people anywhere in the world and in all walks of life. It doesn't matter who you are - if you think you have something that definitely interests young people, send it to us and we'll read them. BLJ particularly welcomes school teachers to submit their work to us (because we're teachers ourselves!).
BLJ is not a theme-based journal (but it does no harm either if you submit something to do with balloons!). We prefer something that is surprising, explosive, unforgettable, extraordinary, mind-blowing, humorous, bold, unique, layered, witty, educational, original etc. In short, we want something excellent! Do read our Issues to see our taste. Go to our Submission Page for guidelines. ​

From Issue 3 onwards, BLJ receives funding from the Hong Kong Teachers Dream Fund so that print copies could be made for and sent to contributors, selected schools, educators and associates of BLJ. The Hong Kong Teachers Dream Fund may also reproduce the content of BLJ's funded issues for non-profit making purposes limited to the promotion of the Fund and BLJ.

BLJ is currently catalogued in the Education Library of the University of Hong Kong.
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WHY "BALLOONS"?

The founder of BLJ, Dr H C Lee, has a habit of drawing "balloons" with faces on students' work to make the kids smile. As time passes it becomes his trademark. He imagines that every issue of BLJ will have these balloonish figures swimming around like viruses! To flatter them so that they'll behave and not eating or messing up the work of our authors, Dr Lee has decided to name the journal after them. And he thinks it is a very logical thing to do.