Actor and director Anais Granofsky has been named the winner of this year’s Ontario Speaker’s Book Award for her memoir The Girl in the Middle: Growing Up Between Black and White, Rich and Poor.

Ted Arnott, the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, made the announcement at a ceremony at Queen’s Park on Monday.

In the book, published by HarperCollins Canada, Granofsky, best known for her role as Lucy Fernandez on Degrassi Junior High and Degrassi High, tells the story of a childhood spent navigating two very different worlds in Toronto: in one, she spent weekends with her wealthy white grandparents; in the other, she and her mother, a descendent of freed Randolph slaves, shared a mattress in a single room in Parkdale.

The Speaker’s Book Award is an annual award that was launched in 2012 and honours nonfiction books by Ontario authors that reflect the province’s diverse culture and history. The winner receives a monetary award and the winning book is stocked in the legislature gift shop and in the legislative library.