Welcome to Orphancorp

Welcome to Orphancorp is a dystopian YA novella set in a near-future Australia where the foster-care system has been outsourced to a private corporation. Mirii Mahoney is seven days from "Age Release" — the end of her time in the Orphancorp system — and determined to make it out clean. She's spent her life cycling through institutions and has learned to survive by keeping quiet, but her final week at Verity House puts that discipline to the test.

The novella counts down Mirii's last seven days as she navigates a volatile relationship with fellow resident Freya, a tentative romance with another inmate, Vu, and the petty tyranny of the "Aunts" and "Uncles" who run the house on behalf of the corporation. The adults are underpaid, indifferent, or actively cruel, and the looming threat of Prisoncorp — the system's punitive next tier — hangs over every decision Mirii makes.

Ward writes in a raw, present-tense voice that stays close to Mirii's interiority: her humor, her guardedness, her flashes of tenderness. The book won Seizure's Viva la Novella award and the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for YA Fiction, and is the first installment of the Orphancorp trilogy.