Want to share your work with our readers? Excellent!

Here are the basics. See below for more detail on each kind of submission.

We are currently accepting submissions for our Fall 2012 (Spring Down Under) issue, due out in September.

We use Submittable to manage submissions. Once you've submitted your work through the simple form at Submittable, you may check your submission's progress at any time at http://42magazine.submishmash.com/user/submissions. We had the option of requiring you to give your street address to Submittable, but we prefer not to require you to share your private information with third-party applications, so if you want us to have your street address for mailing payment to you, please include it in your Submittable cover letter; otherwise, our default assumption is to pay via PayPal or a similar service, to the email address you used on your submission.

We are a paying market. You'll notice that all categories pay the same moderate amount; we are a completely volunteer organization, and we pay to create this magazine out of our own pockets, but we're committed to paying for the art we select, and to transparency about our financial doings.

Simultaneous submissions and previously published work are fine.  There is no limit on the number of items you may submit, but please submit separate genres (e.g. poetry and fiction) separately.  All rights revert to the author/artist.

Things we don't want to see:

• Religious matter:  We believe deeply in the ability of humans to create meaning in themselves and in the world without the help of gods or religions.  We're not interested in publishing articles, poems, or stories that reinforce the idea that these things are necessary in a meaningful life.  Also, if you're one of the handful of people who write us every week telling us that it's possible to find meaning in God, or that your particular religious writing is something we should look at because it's different, please save us both a lot of time -- we KNOW it's possible to find meaning in religion, and we'll read your religious work if you insist, but unless it knocks us on our asses from a literary standpoint (see "Tracks East, Tracks West" in issue 1, for example), we're just not interested.
• Explicitly pornographic images:  We're so happy to print articles about sex and sexuality you can't even believe it. That said, we're not going to jump through the hoops necessary for publishers of photographic porn and such, so keep that in mind when you submit your artwork.
• Diet talk, tips on losing weight, tips on staying "young," or anything that states or implies that bodies of any size or age are inherently ugly or distasteful.
• The tragic stereotype: If your fat character never has sex; if your queer character dies a horrible death in the end; if the only way your character with a disability can get laid is to wheedle or pay for it; if your woman really can only find fulfillment on the arm of her man; please spare us.  We're not saying your art mightn't have a place somewhere. This just isn't the place.