CORONATION Street star Julie Hesmondhalgh is to launch a writing competition in aid of the Sophie Lancaster Foundation.
Julie, who plays Hayley Cropper in the soap, is to set up the competition in 2011 with her dramatist husband Ian Kershaw.
Rossendale student Sophie was a talented artist and writer before she was kicked to death in August 2007 as she held her badly-injured boyfriend Robert Maltby.
The pair had been viciously attacked by a gang in Stubbylee Park, Bacup, because they dressed as Goths.
Julie said: “I am a mother myself and I was horrified to hear about the incident and how they were attacked just because they looked ‘different’.
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