Our Volunteers

Jennie Gollehon is the Nebraska Region Regional Advisor and website coordinator. She writes middle grade with humor and heart, and snappy YA with just the right amount of electric tension. She's an avid reader and a typical overthinker with an insatiable weakness for buying books.

Katie Martens is the Nebraska Region Assistant Regional Advisor. From collecting book quotes to attending writing summer camps as a kid, Katie has always loved the written word. Instead of plowing forward with her dreams of authorship, Katie instead became a lawyer (as her mom liked to say "Lawyers write a lot"). While she does write during her day job (often through email), Katie has found renewed joy in her creative writing in the time she's wedged between work, wrangling two kids and a husband, and walking the dog.

Tim Hantula is the Nebraska Region Illustrator Coordinator. Tim grew up in northeast Iowa, drawing on the roll ends of newsprint from the local paper, eventually receiving his BFA from the University of Northern Iowa. While studying Graphic Design, Theatrical Design, and Illustration/Painting, he worked for the college newspaper creating a weekly comic strip and writing art and theater reviews. The comic strip, Scherzo, won an honorable mention in the 1982 Rolling Stone College Newspaper Awards, and then a 1983 award from the College Media Advisors. Summer School studying children’s book illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design led to a Master's Degree. After grad school, he joined SCBWI and continued working in Theatrical Design, Advertising, Visual Merchandising, and Exhibition Design. In the past several years, he's illustrated book covers for Chicken Scratch books, along with self-publishing a series of comics. He also volunteers with the Great Plains Bluegrass and Old-Time Music Association and the Benson Songwriter Exchange.