Author Bernadette McDonald has won the 2011/2012 Himalayan Club’s Kekoo Naoroji Book Award for her book Freedom Climbers, about a group of Polish mountaineers during the Cold War era.

This is the third time McDonald has won the Kekoo Naoroji award, given to books that address a Himalayan subject. The win adds to her “literary hat-trick” for Freedom Climbers (Rocky Mountain Books), which has also been awarded the U.K.’s Boardman Tasker Prize, the 2012 American Alpine Club Literary Award, and grand prize at the Banff Mountain Book Festival.

According to her publisher, McDonald, the founding vice-president of mountain culture at the Banff Centre, is the first writer to win all four awards and the first Canadian to win the Boardman Tasker.