Photo by James Kegley

Carolyn Hax's advice column is the standard of measurement for the genre. Since her explosion into syndication in 1998, Hax has revolutionized the advice column by giving in-depth, ruthlessly practical, sometimes controversial, often coffee-up-your-nose funny advice that also happens to be really good.

Hax has an uncanny ability to see through what people are saying to the real issue: who they are, what they're doing and why. Then, instead of telling readers what to do, she offers them new ways to think, so they can find for themselves the solutions that best meet their individual needs.

Since 1998, Hax has conducted weekly live discussions on washingtonpost.com. These spirited forums are the most popular on the site and last over two hours – twice the usual length – both to allow her to maintain the depth and quality of the advice and to accommodate the extensive back-and-forth with readers.

Hax went from writing one column a week to two in 1999, then to three in 2002. Answering the demand for a daily column, she now writes three original columns per week and creates four more by adapting and refining the live discussions.

Hax's columns are edited and illustrated by, of all people, her ex-husband, Nick Galifianakis – proving that exes can not only get along, but also work well together, probably because they have too much dirt on each other not to. Galifianakis is a self-taught artist who worked as an editorial cartoonist and illustrator for USA Today before launching his freelance career in 1996. His work has appeared in most major American publications. Galifianakis' spare time revolves, almost exclusively, around the other opinionated pit bull in his life, Zuzu.

Hax is a Harvard graduate, a married mother of three (including a set of twins), and a shoe "aficionado" (addict). She has worked at The Washington Post since 1992 and has been in the news business since 1989 as an editor, freelance writer and full-time columnist. The duo both live in the Washington, D.C., area. Their first book, "Tell Me About It: Lying, Sulking, Getting Fat ... and 56 Other Things Not to Do While Looking for Love," was published in 2001 by Hyperion.