Investigative journalist Svetlana Alexievich has been awarded Nobel Prize for Literature 2015, the Swedish Academy announced Thursday. Alexievich is the first writer from Belarus to win the prize.

Alexievich, 67, used the skills of a journalist to create literature chronicling the great tragedies of the Soviet Union and its collapse: World War II, the Soviet war in Afghanistan, the Chornobyl nuclear disaster and the suicides that ensued from the death of Communism.

Her first novel, 'The Unwomanly Face of the War,' published in 1985 and based on the previously untold stories of women who had fought against the Nazi Germans, sold more than 2 million copies.

Her books have been published in 19 countries. She also has written three plays and the screenplays for 21 documentary films. In its brief citation the Swedish Academy, cited Alexievich 'for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time.'

Last year’s literature award went to French writer Patrick Modiano.

This year’s Nobel announcements continue with the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday and the economics award on Monday. All awards will be handed out on 10 December, the anniversary of prize founder Alfred Nobel’s death in 1896.

On her personal website, Alexievich explains her pursuit of journalism: ‘I chose a genre where human voices speak for themselves.’ Fittingly, Alexievich prefers to leave the stories to her many interviewees, letting eyewitness accounts shed an unsettling light on tragedies like World War II, the Soviet-Afghan War and the disaster at Chernobyl — an investigation that has been read aloud in excerpts on All Things Considered.

For that work, Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster, Alexievich interviewed hundreds of people touched by the massive 1986 nuclear meltdown, which spread radioactivity on the wind across much of Eastern Europe.

‘All of my books consist of witnesses' evidence, people's living voices,’ she told the Dalkey Archive Press. ‘I usually spend three to four years writing a book, but this time it took me more than ten years.’

It has been quite a long time since a nonfiction writer won the Nobel. Not since the heady days of Bertrand Russell and Winston Churchill, over half a century ago, has an author won for a career of work primarily in nonfiction — and never has a journalist won the award. Alexievich's prize breaks that long dry spell.