This month, we’re excited to feature Dr. Kathy O’Fallon ‘88. She is a 1988 Alliant University alumna who recently won the 2026 Henry Morgenthau III First Book Poetry Prize for her manuscript, Proof of Life. The prestigious prize is awarded by Passager Books, a literary press for older writers.
A poet and psychologist, O’Fallon said she practices the art of listening deeply to herself and others, making for a book that is evocative and touching in its honesty.
O’Fallon received her PsyD from Alliant with a specialty in family therapy. “I went to Alliant for the professors,” she said. “They were fabulous! In my field, Alliant had the best in the world.”
O’Fallon said her writing career didn’t begin until she finished at Alliant, her professional life was established, her children were older and settled into school, and “I felt like I had room to be able to create.” Up until then, she was in “survival mode,” figuring out “how to be a wife and a mom and a professional and probably not doing any of those things particularly well,” she said.
O’Fallon grew up a big reader and was initially inspired by her mother’s love of literature. “She wrote short stories and scary stories for us when we would go camping,” she says, “I read pretty much everything that she read, from mysteries to good old fashioned literary fiction.” O’Fallon’s mother also introduced her to poetry. She said, “I would find a poem tucked in her address book; Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s ‘How Do I Love Thee’ was in a frame on her bureau.”
Years later at a writers conference, O’Fallon attended a workshop taught by a woman who was a poet and a therapist. “I was just curious, so I popped my head in,” she says. “There were three couples there—adult daughters and their mothers. It was extraordinarily synchronistic, and I sat down and never left. Although I had walked into that room as a fiction writer, I couldn’t write fiction after that. I could only write poetry.”
Based in Carlsbad, CA, O’Fallon often calls upon poetry in her practice of psychology, encouraging journaling and other writing activities from her clients. “I do use it as an opportunity for them to share something with me that would be hard to otherwise, that emerges from what I’m hearing on the page and isn’t fully fleshed out yet. The unconscious is at work, so it ends up being fruitful.”
Being a psychotherapist also informs O’Fallon’s own writing, in that listening deeply improves both practices. “Good psychotherapy is really only predicted by two factors: one, the person shows up for themselves, and the other is that they feel cared for by the therapist,” she says. “If you’re listening deeply to someone, they’re going to feel cared for. Poetry is so much about listening.” She said, “Much of what I learned about the craft of psychotherapy came from my professors at Alliant.”
O’Fallon offered these three pieces of advice to Alliant students: “First, whether or not you want to pursue clinical work in psychology, I think the most important thing to attend to is your own psychological health. Working with people in a vulnerable state can be triggering, and you want to have done your own work so that when counter-transference issues come up, you’re well-equipped to handle them.
Second, looking back, my connection with fellow students was mutually supportive not only during school but afterwards in the professional world. It’s important to have colleagues for peer consultation.
And finally, I think it was a good idea to get on insurance plans as soon as possible in order to build a clientele quickly.”
O’Fallon’s book, described by award-winning poet Alicia Ostriker as “philosophical, conversational, sharply observant,” is scheduled to be published in early fall. You can pre-order the book at https://passagerbooks.com/books/proof-of-life/.
“I want other people to feel moved the way I feel moved by poetry. That’s the gift of being a poet for me,” O’Fallon says, “so, if that’s what I’ve done, I’ll die happy.”
