Lindy West likes to rank things. The writer, podcaster and comedian ranked dragons recently on her Text Me Back! podcast with co-host Meagan Hatcher-Mays. West’s one-person comedy show, Every Castle, Ranked, has a two-night run Oct. 4 and 5 at Olsen Run Comedy Club & Lounge in Eugene.

Every Castle, Ranked, a humorous multimedia presentation, is as it sounds: West ranking the world’s best castles, including some fantasy picks from literature and movies. In doing so, she says, she explores her dual roles as a writer and performer, two skills that don’t always equate.

Ranking things like castles and dragons is a way to “situate yourself in the matrix of culture,” West tells Eugene Weekly in a phone call.

West made her name with Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman, her 2016 memoir and essay collection covering topics like body positivity and workplace feminism post social media, told with West’s chatty wit and style. 

In 2019, a Shrill adaptation premiered on Hulu. It ran for three seasons, starring Saturday Night Live alum Aidy Bryant in a thinly veiled autobiographical account of West’s time working for Seattle alt-weekly, The Stranger, set instead at a fictitious Portland publication. West grew up in Seattle. She now lives a few hours outside the city, in a cabin on the Olympic Peninsula.

Referring to Every Castle, Ranked, West says, “We go through one at a time and I explain why each one is ranked where it’s ranked. And then gradually, other narratives are woven through about my life and my family and my experience working in TV.”

Like any good ranking, there are criteria. As for dragons,  “I don’t like when a dragon is too scary. I like a dragon to be nice. I like a dragon to be my friend,” West says. And for castles, there’s the castle rating test or “CRT.”

West explains, “Is it pretty? Is it fun? Or is it like someone evil lives there? I would like a functioning modern toilet.” And most importantly, “I would like my castle to be a place of magic and not a place of ‘kings doing empire,’” she says. 

West comes to Eugene having finished a draft of her fourth novel, Adult Braces, recalling a cross-country road trip and West’s experience getting braces at the age of 39. By that point, West was successful but still, “I’m miserable,” she recalls, asking, “What is wrong with my life? Why am I not happy? Then I take off and I do this month-long road trip and investigate that question.”

Across all her projects, writing, she says, has suited her well, allowing her creativity while she also gets to hide. She says her Castle show is “me trying to step out of that fear,” and overcome the shyness she’s felt since childhood. 

All in all, Every Castle, Ranked is about figuring out who you are, what you want to be and what it means to be a star, a role West has never been comfortable with. “I identify as a dud,” she says. 

And does she only castles in Europe? No, West answers quickly. “I have a global view,” West says. “I’m trying not to get canceled.”

Co-created with comedian, writer and musician, Ahamefule J. Oluo, Lindy’s husband, Every Castle, Ranked is 7  pm and 9:30 pm Friday and Saturday, Oct 4 and 5 at Olsen Run Comedy Club & Lounge, 44 East 7th Avenue; $28, 21-plus.