Katherine Boo, a former staff writer at both The Washington Post and Washington City Paper, won the 2012 National Book Award for non-fiction last night for her three-year study on a slum on the outskirts of the Mumbai, India airport.

Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death And Hope In A Mumbai Undercity was adapted from a 2009 article Boo wrote for The New Yorker.

Boo worked for the Post from 1993 to 2003. In 2000, she won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for a series of articles on neglect and abuse in D.C.’s homes for the mentally retarded. She was a staff writer for City Paper between 1989 and 1990.