Born in Lima, 1979, Vilela is a journalist and publisher. He has been editorial director of Grupo Planeta in Peru since 2005, and was deputy editor of  the magazine Etiqueta Negra. He studied journalism at the Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas (UPC) in Lima, where he was later professor of literary journalism. His articles have appeared in newspapers and magazines in Europe, the U.S. and Latin America, such as Paris Review, El País and Virginia Quarterly. He was the recipient of a grant from Gabriel García Márquez's New Journalism Foundation, and in 2008 he was invited by the foundation to take part in the conference New Journalists of the Indies, which brought together the 30 most representative non-fiction writers of Latin America. The National Youth Council of Peru has recognised his work as a journalist.