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Several dramatists have won the Nobel in Literature. Harold Pinter, Samuel Beckett, Elfriede Jelinek, and probably some I'm not remembering.

EDIT: Eugene O'Neil, Jacinto Benavente, Dario Fo

Sadly Fo has passed away today.

Playwrights have won several times. The problem with screenplays, as they exist today, is that they basically never really have 'an author' in the traditional sense.

And should novels be eligible for songwriting awards?

Most early poetry was sung, and we're fine with calling that literature. Calling Dylan's work poetry does step over some normative lines, but they're fairly arbitrary lines.

I know you were being sarcastic, but your comparison isn't really apt. Novels are not a lyric medium: they're prose. Song lyrics are lyrics set to music. Some poetry is "lyrics" without the music (although lyric poetry is not quite the same thing).

I think the contention is that lyrics and novels are non-overlapping subsets of literature.

Songwriting clearly doesn't include novels. Literature includes both, and more.

If they have a tune and you can dance to them.

Spoken word does exist. You're just drawing up arbitrary lines when in real life boundaries between media and genre aren't so distinct.