Celia Almeida Interview
Celia Almeida is a music, arts, and culture journalist. She’s the former culture editor at Miami New Times, and has been published in Billboard, Consequence, and more.
How did you get to where you are today, professionally?
As a child, I felt confused when peers complained about free writes or essays—they were my favorite part of school. I worked at a bookstore in high school and on breaks from college, and I devoured music magazines (Rolling Stone, Spin, MOJO, American Songwriter) before and after my shifts and on lunch breaks. I’d had a tunnel-vision focus on music and musicians since I was a child. (One of my earliest memories is not being able to eat or get out of bed for two days when Selena was killed. I was six.)
Coming from my background—first-generation daughter of working-class Cuban and Salvadoran immigrants—it never occurred to me that you could make a career of writing, and much less about music, which was seen as a frivolous interest in my household. I started out as a psych major at the University of Florida. The field interested me, but I didn’t see a future in it. After a year-and-a-half, I switched to English, with some journalism classes thrown in for good measure. I figured if I did pursue music journalism, I could apply what I learned in dissecting and critiquing literature to music.