The last time a nonfiction writer won the Nobel Prize for literature was in 1953 by Winston Churchill. So this years winner, journalist Svetlana Alexievich comes as a welcome surprise. She is most famous for Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster where Alexievich interviewed the innocent people who watched as the Chernobyl meltdown happened in their backyard.
Learn more about her in the Smithsonian article 5 Things to Know About Svetlana Alexievich, Winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature