Golestan was closely associated with Iranian poet Forough Farrokhzad, whom he met in his studio in 1958, until her death.

For example, in response to the publication of a biographical/critical study by Michael Craig Hillmann called A Lonely Woman: Forugh Farrokhzad and Her Poetry (1987), he published a lengthy attack against Hillmann in a Tehran literary magazine,[5] to which Hillmann responded at length in an article, part of which was also published in the same Tehran literary magazine.

In 2005, Golestan's long conversation with Parviz Jahed was published in Iran under the title Writing with a Camera (Neveshtan ba Doorbin).

[citation needed] In February 2017, 50 years after Farrokhzad's death, the 94-year-old Golestan broke his silence about his relationship with Forough, speaking to Saeed Kamali Dehghan of The Guardian.

Director Mitra Farahani initiated an email exchange between Golestan and French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard, with emailed text letters from Golestan and "videos, images, and aphorism" responses from Godard.