Rafael Alejandro Acero Hernández is a Mexican-American writer and Creative Director at Mode Salon in Arlington, Texas. His work bridges lyric memoir, cultural testimony, and queer poetics, reclaiming personal narrative as a tool for resistance and healing. His debut memoir, Love in the Time of Grief, explores love, loss, and transformation through a bold, bilingual lens—fusing emotional depth with irreverent humor and raw honesty.

Rafael’s mission is simple and powerful: to IME the world:  Inspire, Motivate, Empower. He’s done it behind the chair, in classrooms, and across kitchen tables. Now he does it through story—his, yours, ours.

Grief is part of him, but it does not define him. Just like the labels the world tried to trap him in:
Gay. Mexican. Faggot. Wetback.
He carries them, but he is so much more.
He is growth. He is transformation. He is love that refuses to die.

Through his books, his voice, and his platform, Rafael speaks to those becoming—again and again. To those finding light in rubble. To those rebuilding from ruin. To those ready to feel it all and rise anyway.

This mission began in the classroom—but it was never meant to stay small. Rafael is here to IME the world.
Not just with grief, but with growth.
Not just with pain, but with power.
Not just with labels, but with liberation.
One story at a time.