The year is 2014, editor Erik Jensen contacts short fiction writer Maxine Beneba Clarke, and convinces her to write creative portraits for a new national newspaper, The Saturday Paper. The next four years will be a journalistic baptism of fire. She will come face to face with Prime Minister Tony Abbott; spend exactly nine minutes with Hollywood film star Hugh Jackman; write a love letter to Prince; be escorted out of David Jones for stalking Santa Claus; watch transgender porn star Buck Angel striptease; eat slut cupcakes with feminist Karen Pickering; troll a local racist fried chicken eatery; hold audience with the Australian Ambassador to China; covertly profile One Plus One presenter Jane Hutcheons; share the stage with writer Roxane Gay; sip green tea with dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, and exchange emails with President Obama. These are The Saturday Portraits.