As summer approaches, the number of high-paying writing contests seems to increase. The following ten are only a sample of all the opportunities out there for emerging writers to have their work published. Good luck!

Carve Magazine Raymond Carver Short Story Award – In its fifteenth year, the prestigious RCSS Award is being judged by award-winning writer Andre Dubus III (House of Sand and Fog), and carries a $1000 first-place prize. Winners are announced August 1^st and can expect publication both online and in print editions of the magazine. The website also promises the winning story to be read by three literary agencies. Go for it. Entry Fee: $15 Deadline: May 15

Ploughshares Emerging Writer’s Contest – This is an annual contest from one of the most well-respected journals in the country. Three prizes of $1000 each and publication for a short story, essay, and poem. Entry fee of $24 includes a one-year subscription, so there’s no reason not to apply. Details here. Entry Fee: $24 Deadline: May 15

Sonora Review 2015 Contests – Prizes of $1000 each and publication given to a previously unpublished short story, poem, and micro essay of up to 800 words. Essays are judged by Amy Leach, fiction by Stuart Dybek, and poetry by Rusty Morrison. Check it. Entry Fee: $15 Deadline: May 15

Montreal International Poetry Prize – Submit a poem of up to 40 lines for publication in Global Poetry Anthology, win a hefty prize of $20,000 CAD (about $15800 USD). Whatever you do, make sure it’s a good one. One poem per $20 entry fee. Guidelines here. Entry Fee: $20 Deadline: May 15

Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition – This contest has been running since 1981 and draws up to 1200 submissions every year. First-place winner receives $1500 and publication in the journal Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts. Go ahead, submit. Entry Fee: $15 Deadline: May 15

New Letters Literary Awards – A total of $4500 given out to an essay, short story, or group of three to six poems. $20 entry fee for the first entry, $15 for each subsequent entry. Entry fees include a one-year subscription to the publication. Enter here. Entry Fee: $20 Deadline: May 18

Gival Press Novel Award – Generous prize of $3000, publication by Gival Press, and 20 author copies awarded to an unpublished novel manuscript between 30,000 and 100,000 words. Check it out. Entry Fee: $50 Deadline: May 30

Elixir Press Fiction Award – This small press is giving out a prize of $2000, publication, and 25 author copies for a short-story collection or a novel manuscript between 120 and 500 pages. Learn more here. Entry Fee: $40 Deadline: May 31

Glimmer Train Short Story Award for New Writers – Another month, another Glimmer Train contest. This one is open only to unpublished writers and carries the usual prize of $1500 for first place. Submit here. Entry Fee: $15 Deadline: May 31

Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction – The University of Georgia Press has held this prestigious award for collections of short fiction since 1983. The winner receives $1000, publication of their manuscript by UoGP, and serious bragging rights. More information here. Entry Fee: $30 Deadline: May 31

Looking to submit your work to publications with no entry fees? Check out our Literary Forecast.

 by Alex Fulton

Some people like Valentine’s Day, and quite a few others despise it, but despite what the Hallmark corporation has done to capitalize on the world’s collective love life, the fact remains that love and relationships are an indelible part of what it means to be human. These ten books span a range of genres and feelings on the subject—from fiction to poetry to self-help, from gooey sentimentality to brooding cynicism—so no one should feel left out.

 The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

This cool breeze of a novel can be read in an afternoon, and tells a complex love story that spans a century. After World War II, Leo Gursky fell in love and wrote a book; decades later, a young girl named after one of the characters in his book takes off on a quest to save her family. The manner in which these two threads are woven together should delight and move even the coldest of hearts.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

“If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger.” This stone classic of a novel bursts at the seams with a youthful sense of love’s cataclysmic possibilities. Surprisingly sophisticated given the author’s youth—life, death, and eros merge in a serpentine tale of broken hearts, familial drama, and rugged handsomeness.

First Love and Other Shorts by Samuel Beckett

A man visiting his father’s grave turns over in his mind the memories and follies of his youth, evoking both the sweetness of young love, and the bitterness of its foibles. Beckett’s outlook on life could hardly be called optimistic, but in the title story to this collection he comes as close as he ever did to allowing the reader a glimpse into the workings of his sullen heart.

One Hundred Poems From the Japanese, Kenneth Rexroth trans. & Women Poets of China, Kenneth Rexroth & Ling Chung trans.

These two volumes of poetry, translated by Kenneth Rexroth, contain some of the most romantic lines ever inscribed, proving that, though millennia have passed, though empires and kingdoms have risen and fell, that most simple yet inscrutable of human emotions, love, endures.

Love and Will by Rollo May

Philosophically dense but highly readable, this stunning work manages to coalesce 2000 years of literature, philosophy, and psychology into a cohesive picture of the meaning and role of love in a modern world that, in its sheer modernness, seems to have forgotten it.

PIHKAL: A Chemical Love Story by Alexander and Ann Shulgin

Aren’t all love stories ultimately based on chemistry? Alexander Shulgin, who died last year, is known as the father of MDMA (the “love drug”), and the book he wrote together with his wife of 33 years, Ann, will expand both your mind and your heart. Part memoir and part chemical index, PIHKAL is their shared testament to a range of lifelong devotions: to pharmaceutical research, to furthering humanity’s understanding of consciousness, and most of all, to each other.

How to Be an Adult in Relationships: The Five Keys to Mindful Loving by David Richo

Having relationship problems? “Most people think of love as a feeling, but love is not so much a feeling as a way of being present,” writes David Richo in this manual to becoming a more loving and realistic person. The key is mindfulness in the Buddhist sense of the term. This book will empower you to move away from the default setting of judgment, fear, and blame to one of openness and compassion.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Shakespeare

Endlessly parodied and reenacted, Shakespeare’s timeless comedy captures like few other works the madcap frenzy of love and desire. Chances are you’ve read it before, but the massive depth of its language and the range of content on display (not to mention the happy ending) make it one to be revisited again and again.

I Like You by Sandol Stoddard Warburg

As simple and powerful a declaration of romantic feeling as you will ever find, this children’s book from 1965 can be read in five minutes, but those five minutes will stay with you for a lifetime. Read it out loud with someone you love, and dare each other not to cry.

by Alex Fulton